The Wars of the Dead
by Diabolico
Summary: A land, cast into turmoil with the outbreak of hordes of hellish demons, must place its safety into the arm of a wise yet shifty dark practicioner of the arts of reanimation, as well as his unlikely ally, a paladin of the holiest order.
1. In the Beggining

The moor was a dark, quiet scene; the sun having spent it's last rays upon the stolid winter landscape. The birds slept soundly, nestled warmly in their homes in the rotting trees and bramble nests, sheltered from the biting wind and nagging cold. Likewise, as the sun sank ever lower over the eternally red horizon, the townsfolk of Bridgeton remained behind locked doors. Nestled in front of fires in the hour their children dread; the nighttime curfew was approaching. The sons and daughters passed on to bed, striding heavily from the hearth in the family rooms and down the dark, cold-seeming hallways to their bedrooms, to sleep the dark away.  
  
Things moved in the twilight. Dark shapes shot from the light-forsaken land. As the sun disappeared finitely beyond the crop fields to the north of the town in the valley, nightmarish shapes crept from the blending shadows. Then a child screamed.  
  
The silence was shattered, like a rock, hurled viciously into a placid lake surface, the reverberating, spine-chilling sound shooting across the barren, motionless land. The townsfolk where nonexistent in the winter- ravaged community. Then the cries arose from the night, first one, sounding far off, alone, and then, as the adults recovered thier voices, the alarm was risen throughout the huddled masses of thatched houses.  
  
"Awake! Awake! Townsmen of York to arms! To arms!" came the ancient Yorkshire cry of alarm. Fires blazed suddenly in the windows of the outlying houses, and a woman was heard screaming as the far, distant house caught fire and bathed the nearby area in a hellish light.  
  
"My House!"  
  
"Awake!"  
  
". . .My Child!"  
  
"Awake!"  
  
"My God, Help Me!"  
  
"To arms! To arms!"  
  
The woman, stumbling, in the searing pain of heat from the pyre that had been her house, tripped screaming over the dark landscape in search of her abducted loved one. She saw it, suddenly, then, gliding, unsteadily towards the Evil Place on the outside of town, dragging the struggling child in it's wake. A demonic, twisted eye swiveled and fixed itself upon the terrified mother. She, with the passon only a mother could conjure in so deathly a moment, regained her senses in her child's terror, and lifted heavily a nearby stick from the cold, hard ground. The nasty eyes narrowed in hate and murderous intention. She is old, and frail. . .You will taste the blood of two tonight. . . The creature took a step towards the trembling figure of the woman. It smiled.  
  
A blade whistled over head, and a flashing glint of cruel steel whirled swiftly and cleanly in the dark. The creature's face was torn, transfigured in it's agony and hate; blood ran thickly down it's wet claws as it gripped it's neck. Then it's hideous head toppled from it's body.  
  
"Awake! To arms! The Demons are upon us!"  
  
The child, covered in warm blood, stood staring as the rough and demonic claw slid heavily from his wrist. A tall, imposing figure stood in oppossite of him, pale white armor clinging together to form a terrifying and devilish shape of a man. The two hands clutched the hilt of a jagged, gleaming sword-blade, poised threateningly over the writhing carcass of the Demon-thing. The devil's head turned slowly on the mighty, mailed shoulders, green, glowing eyes glaring out from beneath a concealing and evil-looking helmet, satanic designs etched across it's bone-colored surface. A stream of vomit erupted from the child's chalky, dry lips and the bile spilled over the feet of the observing warrior-shadow. The warrior did not move an inch.  
  
"D-D-Danathen!" stuttered the mother, in panic at this new threat; her violently trembling hands stretched frantically for her son.  
  
The figure looked up, the eyes silencing the wailing woman and leaving the wretched child, holding his stomach in the pain of fear and sickness. Blood mixed with vomit on the rock-hard ground, and steam rose from the warm body fluids in the frigid night air. The eyes had still not moved from the mother, but now the townsfolk were arriving through the rapidly growing circles of torchlight in the town streets. The woman, pinned down irresistably by the horrible glare of the dark warrior, her eyes sucked, terrified to the ground at her feet as she sunk to her knees and babbled in utter horror at the powerful, hex-like gaze.  
  
"To arms! Kill them all!" screeched a townsman, a sword of pitiable quality clenched in his white-knuckled fist.  
  
The warrior, releasing the woman, quickly shot a glance at the approaching crowd of armed farmers. The woman dropped to the ground, exhausted, and the boy whimpered in terror as the shadow above him moved, quickly turning away from the wretched two and casting a gauntleted hand over the dark terrain.  
  
A loud 'CRACK!' and crumble was to be heard and fires leapt up across the night, as several indistinct figures erupted in flame, then died away just as suddenly into the night. The jagged sword was sheathed as the townsfolk scampered cautiously towards the horrified mother and son, and kept a wary, nervous watch on the turned, unaware shadow-warrior.  
  
"You!" cried a man in the front of the group. "W-w-who are you?" he asked, trying without effect to hide the fear in his voice.  
  
The body turned. The now dark helmet centering almost wearily on the one who had spoken. The townsman gained confidence. "Who are you?"  
  
"I," began the figure, the dense night seeming gather about it's obscure shape, ". . . I am the last hope for your continued existence." The warrior's gloved hand reached up and pulled the heavy steel helm from his head, and long silvery white hair toppled down past the man's shoulders. Presenting a sharp contrast to the stranger's tanned and youthful face, the hair seemed to glow in the night; breaking the heavy shell of darkness around the people.  
  
The townsfolk stepped back, taken aback and could only gape at their strange savior; and the woman, now clutching her staring child, cried;  
  
"Bless you! Bless your soul in heaven for all time!" She cried in joy. He had saved her child. He meerly stared down at her, a lackadasical, lop- sided grin wrinkled the left side of his face.  
  
"Do you people have an inn here? Or must I sleep with the demons?" He asked. 


	2. Friction in the Town

The man awoke, well before the townsfolk had risen for their daily chores in the feilds, and long before the first bird's song broke the early silence of the still morning. He wetted a cloth and wiped his sword from the blood and grime of last night and slowly sharpened the crooked, wavered blade. It gleamed eerily in the dark candlelight of the still dim room. It played off the walls, causing strange shadows and dim shapes to grow and diminish against the far wall and flicker in synch with the gentle candlelight.  
  
He then set about the task of unpacking his belongings, the sun on the rise, he had finished before it's startling light graced the roofs of the sleeping town. Horrific, demonic items were scrawled about the room, on the small dresser peice on the far wall, across the writing desk lay tomes and scrolls of far-off and forgotten languages, and a dozen vials of forebodding liquids and mixtures littered the far corner on a make-shift stool. However, far beyond these evil, arcane items, there were even more blasphemous, disgusting artifacts.  
  
A human skull, full to the brim with a dark, reddish liquid glittered in the light, it's brain cavity having been polished over and sealed inside by glass, the ominous substance danced eerily in swirls over the eye cavities. Against a far wall a greater evil lay; the mangled and twisted pieces of a human corpse hung from a peg high on the wood, the stench of decay held back by the evidently complete and seamless cotton and gauze wrappings covering the devilish outline. They were worn with age, and brownish red in the dim, blocked light of the shuttered windowed room. The Necromancer had arrived.  
  
After the sun had risen and the men and young women had tended the feilds for the morning and prepared breakfast, the hero staked down the stairs into the kitchen after having locked his door tightly and whispered a severe hex over the knob. No one would enter the room but he. The townsfolk gathered in the Inn that morning eyed him warily, (they were mostly men, cautious of the tavern women seated on thier laps,) and most merely sneered at this traveler's rather lithe frame, and continued their noisy discourse and meals. The sorceror glided among these wretches to seat himself in front of the tender.  
  
"Have you eggs of poultry and Yorkshire ham?" he asked, his voice gruff yet somehow melodious.  
  
"Aye. . ." responded the nervous tender, happy to turn away from that suspicious face and go about the action of cooking.  
  
Indeed the man had a frightening countenance; a scar ripping the youthful features of his tan face and running from his silvery white scalp down to the area above his right eye, dividing the eyebrow in a neat, pink seam, and continued on the cheek below the right eye, travelling through his thick beard growth and down to the sharp angle of his cheekbone. The eyes were, as the hair, a pale, silvery hue, but also as the hair, it could be inferred that they had not always been that way; some grave evil or fright had this man seen to earn the white and grey he wore, some profound and distinguished horro had graced his eyes, and lurked in them still, as he stroked his black scruffy chin-growth and peered about the room around him, without reserve.  
  
"Oy!" cried a man nearby him, muscular and large. "Just what are you so damn happy about? Think you showed yourself a fighter, eh? 'Cause last night? Shaw! No thing was that, no thing at all; so wipe that little look from yer young lip, or I'll add some more white hairs to your pretty head!"  
  
The Necromancer peered slowly across at the man, and the bemused smile that had been growing on is face since the man first addressed him now stood firm upon his face.  
  
"Say as you please, my grotesque and angry freind, but be wary; I am not that you think I am." He said, his voice, no longer rough, sung beautifully over the silent crowd. The women, even of the less respected class, lifted thier heads from the shoulders of their customers in order to hear the sound of this new man's voice as it sung the song of warning across to the furious brute along the bar.  
  
"You'll eat that, you will!" He bellowed, his eyes aflame with fury, and he smashed the glass he had been drinking from. "I'll swear to any man I'll kill you for that!"  
  
The white-haired stranger cocked his head, the smile growing an inch, and said;  
  
"Next time you threaten someone with death," he said, the voice enchanting the listeners, "make sure they are someone who fears it." The room awed and mummered excitedly. A fight. . .  
  
The other man pulled his sword quickly and stood up straight.  
  
"Thats the final bit, that is!" He cried, and swung a powerful blow at the smirking man opposite him. But the Necromancer was too quick and it was air that was cleaved by the mighty blade. Then the sorceror attacked.  
  
Moving with blinding speed, the stranger's hand whipped out his curved and winding blade, and the cold steel gleamed devilishly in the room's cramped space. Holding the blade overhead in the classic dagger-style, he began whipping it in rapid, arcing figure eights and advanced with amazing speed towards the startled brute. Two deep gashes ripped into the aggressor's cloth shirt, and red blood stained the cotton spreading rapidly outwards and down the garb. The man's sword dropped, and he cried out loudly as he fell backwards onto the bar.  
  
"No! No! Not on the bar! Get out! Get out!" screamed the small bartender. The sorcerer, shrugging, grabbed the terrified opponent to his feet and threw him with astounding streghnth out the doors. The aggressor landed with a thud in the dust and struggled to turn over onto his back as the Necromancer stalked up to loom silently over him. He was chanting softly, and his blade still whipped around in steadily closing figure eights.  
  
"Please! No!" pleaded the defeated man, somehow too weak to even lift his hand. "Don't kill me!" but the sorcerer cast a dark hand over the pitious creature, and his face contorted in pain as he stiffened and fell back rigid onto the ground, his terrified eyes bolt open and gazing horrified. The sorcerer chanted loudly now, in a language long forgotten.  
  
"Halo grash, giglash granath O'ileith!"  
  
"Please!"  
  
". . .Forgarthla! Grandushkindibada! Krushkurdagaglash! Korumar! KORUMAR!"  
  
"N-n-noooo. . ."  
  
"NO!" screeched a woman's terrified voice, and thin fingers wrapped around the sorcerer's free wrist; the bartender's daughter had erupted from the tavern and fought through the crowd to stay the stranger's hand. Her eyes went wide open when she touched him; the skin was cold as ice! And the woman stepped back as the chanting stopped and the necromancer whirled upon this insolent meddler.  
  
"What do you want?" he spat, the sweetness being replaced by a stinging, hateful voice. The crowd shrank in his fury.  
  
"Please, good sir. . .do not slay this man. He is not worthy of the blade!" argued the woman, sheilding her eyes from the enchanted gaze.  
  
"And why," asked the voice, losing it's fury, "is he deserving of anything but the hottest flames of hell?"  
  
"Because," replied the woman, "He is the father of my child." She breathed.  
  
The sorcerer scoffed in amusement. The startled woman looked up quickly at him.  
  
"What makes you think I give a damn about that?" he laughed evily, and lifted the blade once more. The crowd gasped and the woman shreiked pitifully. "Help!" came voice suddenly, "Help me!" the sorcerer looked up from the crowd, and frowned in annoyance. "Somebody help meeeeeee!" 


	3. The Art of Necromancy

Thanks for the reveiw; and you're right; he is a bit strong for a smelly little Necromancer; an explanation will be disclosed. Plus, I promise there will be more, more MORE demon killing in this chapter, so don't think it'll all be drunken-fool beat-downs and wailings on townsfolk. Oh yeah, and I forgot, I don't own Diablo II or anything like it or else I would'nt be writing this story here; it'd be in a video-game magazine somewhere. . .That said. . . -J. Diabolico-  
  
"Help! Please God!" came the scream louder, the Sorcerer ran hard toward the perilous cry, his legs pumping hard under his thin ring mail skirt. He grew in confidence as he felt the light kris blade bumping along his side and the jars of poison in the slits of his low belt. A few of the more courageous townsfolk had pulled themselves away from the crying man and the bar-maid to come see what the noise was, but he had left them behind; he ran with all the skill of a hare; his feet seeming not to touch the ground as he sped over the terrain. A small golden amulet jingled and glowed around his neck. . .  
  
"Somebody save us!" The voice was now very loud, over the next hill. . . He erupted over the pass, and beheld the horrible scene, one, two, three demon corpses lay about a huddled mass of two armed men and a cowering woman. An entire horde of waist-high, green skinned creatures circled them menacingly; sabres held out murderously as they prepared to finish off their cornered prey; then the girl's screams took on another pitch. One of the demon corpses had began to twitch. The Necromancer's eyes glowed bright green as he stood on the hill, his hand out over the scene.  
  
"Hraka, shumaradrin, Jangushka!" he commanded; 'I beseech ye, spirits, Arise!' The corpse exploded, the bones scattered and flecks of flesh spattered the combatants; even the demons stood; transfixed. Quickly, the bones shot together; rapidly climbing atop one another in a horrible heap of bone; and a figure appeared; a human like skeleton, tall and glowing eerily about it's joints, bent quickly and took up the demon sword at it's clawed feet. Then looked upon the scene. "Trankular, Kurumar!" the Necromancer ordered. 'kill them!'  
  
The skeleton whirled immeadiatly and stared at the sorcerer on the hilltop, then glared at the still stareing men and people. It lingered uncertainly.  
  
"Gar, jula?" it inquired in an enchanted voice. 'which ones?'  
  
"Kandara-bukala!" came the reply; 'The unhumans!' and the skeleton set it's clawed feet evenly and then leapt suddeny into combat, sword tearing the legion of demons to peices. The Necromancer was chanting again, and the men, seeing this beastly monstrosity of magic was helping them, they gingerly continued to fight on through the confused and terrified demon hordes. Another skeleton had arisen. Then two more, and another, final bone warrior erupted from the cold corpse of a slain green monster. Five terrible warriors now hacked in a triangle through the fleeing, short creatures, their hellish swords slashing and decapitating the beasts in their terror.  
  
"Come quickly, or they will overcome my men and return." Came a grave voice at the woman's side, she gasped as she saw the Necromancer leap nimbly to her side, the other men also stared amazed. The number of demons scattered about them was awe-inspiring, but already one heap of skeletal bones had fallen, the remaining four did not even slow down in thier efforts, but continued mindlessly. "Come!"  
  
"Who. . .how?" the girl whispered, her hand clutching her side painfully. Her eyes were glazed and sleepy. "You are, wounded?" came the far-away voice of the stranger. "Take this. . ." and he reached up and took the amulet from around his neck; he gasped slightly and blinked rapidly as he felt the enchanted stregnth exit his arms and legs. He quickly placed it around the girl's slender neck and said to the closest man; "There is a town, above the hill, people are coming to help you as we speak. Meet them, . . ." another two skeleton's had dropped, the demons were no longer fleeing, they had the last two surrounded. ". . .Go!"  
  
The two men, as if set free from invisible grips, stammered a hesitant 'Yes' and snatched up the blinking, gasping girl gingerly, her eyes looked clearer, but the cut had landed on her side hard, it would be close, if she lived. . .  
  
"The amulet will help her, it is all that can be done. . ." the Necromancer contented himself. But why had he given it her? What had made him care as he had never before? Without it, the ebbing demons would be harder to fight off, and he had not had time to don his armor. . . "Trag'Oul, give me stregnth." He whispered, and he once again felt the thrill of power as gleaming white bones leapt from the cold earth and wrapped themselves around his frame, peicing together a loose, weak suit of armor and a wicked, horned skull helm over his white hair. Green, evil orbs glared viciously from the darkness behind the eye cavities. The last skeleton fell in a disorganized heap. The demons rushed towards him, reasured by the appearance of a large, hideous leader figure who was seemingly screaming orders at the angry masses. The Necromancer caught a few of the evil-sounding, demonic words, but his studying was limited; 'kill,' and 'infidel human' were all he could hear.  
  
The demons, skin bright green, swarmed towards him, eyes aflame with hate and vile intentions, they sought revenge. Over his long years in combat, having first learned the finer arts of sword technique from his father, (who himself had not been a sorcerer but a merchant of wide renown,) he was unusually skilled with the dagger technique, and held his kris in front of him, hilt pointed upwards and the sword blade angled down towards his feet in the dagger-stabbing style. He quickly pulled a vial of black liquid from his belt, and, dousing the blade completely in the powerful poison, he tossed the glass away.  
  
The first demon was fast and panting hard; it's stinking breath blasting out in disgusting, rotten smelling grunts. The Necromancer stood, bent over and with braced feet, the first demon was almost upon him, and it lifted it's grimy blade angrily and cried out in a horrible, bastard language. The sorcerer stood his ground, and at the last minute, spun quickly around and on the end of his turn, swung the sharp kris upwards, slicing through the oncoming creature's jaw, and sending it careening backwards with a pained yelp.  
  
Not waiting for the next enemy, the Necromancer brought his blade around and began spinning and ducking in classic knife-fighter style, bringing the kris down into the back of the next demon, and quickly spinning away with a slashing motion to decapitate yet another vile beast. Without his amulet, however, the sorcerer's swords expertise was waning, and he was soon sweating hard and rapidly losing his stamina.  
  
Many demons all about him began to choke and fall, foam and green rot bubbling forth from thier gasping mouths, and he knew the powerful poison had taken it's toll. The monster's apparent leader watched in horror as his troops were cut down mercilessly; this would require some magic. . .  
  
Much to the fatigued Necromancer's dismay, he witnessed, in a break in one of his turns, the corpse of a slain minion leap nimbly back to life in a dazzling spray of blood which still leapt from it's open wound. A necromancer among the enemy. . .thought the sorcerer to himself, seeing the lead creature chanting in it's disgusting, brutal tounge. More corpses rose, and the warrior swung now weakly to defend, not to attack; he felt blows land upon his cracking armor, soon it would crumble. . .  
  
"Janga!" he screamed, thrusting out his arm with force, and sending a conjured splint of razor-sharp bone flying towards the enemy sorcerer, then fell to hacking away at the horde closing in on him. The spear sped quickly towards it's target, who still had it's eyes closed tightly in concentration; when it opened them, the last thing it would ever see would be the Necromancer; tall and fighting, surrounded by five gleaming skeletons; cutting viciously through his fleeing troops; and a bright, ever growing beam of pointed white-light, speeding towards his face. . .  
  
The Necromancer stood from over the demon preist's slain corpse, now missing it's head, which he held, gnarled and burnt, by it's greasy black hair. His armor, cut and useless, fell from his tired body in peices; only the skull helmet remained, the demons being too short to have reached more than chest level. A gaint skull graced his shoulder, and the gleaming spike on it's crown stood sharp and tall.  
  
His skeletal companions stalked jerkily around, searching as they had been commanded for any valuables that may be found amounst the dead. One excitedly came up to it's master, a fist ful of gold coins in it's thin claws, and seemed to grin as the Necromancer smirked and patted it on it's empty head. He pocketed the twenty-seven peices. It would buy him something cheap, but he needed food. . .  
  
"Hey!" shouted a voice, loud and near. "Where are you, stranger?" The sorcerer spun quickly, and saw the townsfolk searching for the battle on the hill above the plain. The skeltons also stopped abruptly, and cautiously ambled towards their master, should these new creatures be hostile.  
  
"Hala, O'umaka?" one asked. 'they are, enemy?' "Naka." Came the reply. 'No.' Then, "Repaka gin Tumar." 'Get back to work.' The skeleton nodded briskly, it's brittle bones grinding to make an unpleasent sound.  
  
"There he is!" a voice came from over the hill, "Over the. . ." but it stopped short, the call dying in the man's throat. "What the hell is that?"  
  
The Necromancer looked wearily up at the group gathered at the top of the hill, and tried to think of how to explain himself; but then again, the hell with it. . .he thought, and sent the skeletal warriors back to the piles of bone they had come from with a quick flick of his wrist. He picked up the demon head he had dropped, for his scientific studies on the best poison to use against them, and walked briskly through the silent, gaping crowd of men. They parted, terrified, from his path, and closed in hesitantly in his wake. 


	4. The Unholy Alliance: Quest to stop Diabl...

It may be developing slowly, but I think it will be worth it; you get to learn the Necromancer's name, in this episode, and, as my title suggests, a new character steps forth from the shadows. A vague plot is set, and the purpose of the Sorcerer's quest is revealed, setting the scene for, as promised, more demon beat downs and creature-killing. -J. Diabolico-  
  
Night fell quickly, like an evil blanket over the town, covering the hills and valleys surrounding the speck of light that was Bridgetown. Too quiet were the streets that night; the men in the Inn being too frightened to utter anything above a silent whisper. Strange sounds emitted from under the door upstairs; alien, obscure noises, muffled by the thick oak door that stood between the stairs and the feared, mysterious room behind it.  
  
Around twelve o'clock, the man stalked silently down the stairs. Nobody could hear his soft footfalls, nor notice the creeping shadow slipping down the wood stairwell. "Barkeep." Came the voice, no longer with it's strange effect of hypnosis, but with the effect of startled terror, "a drink; something . . . strong."  
  
The bartender trembled in horror. "O-of course, my finest, finest, . . .?" "Yes, as long as it's strong, thank you." Interrupted the voice, impatiently. The whole of the bar's eyes were upon him, stuck as a bird will often stare, transfixed, into the eyes of the most deadly of snakes, as it slowly unwinds to strike. . .  
  
"Stranger." Came a voice, braver than the rest, that made the men jump and turn. The Necromancer shifted his weight in the silent room, and the bartender recieved the most vile of stares that said, get my damn drink and stop staring. "Yes?" he replied, seeing the dark cloak crouched in the corner almost right away. The shaded man slowly stood, straightening to an unimpressive height, but the voice continued in it's brave, commanding tone. "You are the one who saved the travellers this morning?" it inquired, then not waiting for a reply, "Very impressive work. I noticed the extensive use of, questionable arts. . ." "You are a preist of the new religion." Declared the Necromancer, noticing the gleam of the holy artifact clutched just beneath the shadow of the cloak. The hand shifted, and the trinket jingled out from the shadow. "And you, my dark friend, are a disciple of the Rathma cult!" replied the man, throughing back the cloak and shouting imposingly. "A blasphemous, devilish swine!"  
  
The Necromancer laughed, a deep, true, and evil laugh; rolling forth from some horrible, low place within the twisted and deceptive man. "You have studied well, my holy freind." He said, the final bubbling mirth escaping between his words. "But I am afraid that we refer to ourselves as more of a religion than a cult."  
  
The Preist glared at the Sorcerer with hate in his eyes; I have been traveling in your footsteps for two months now, dreading that you would slip hither, into our lands, the lands of the west!" he glowered. "You bring with you poison and evil beyond the scope of that which resides here already!" "You have forgotten something, my agressive and confused companion. . ." "And what would that be, you foul and evil demon!" "I was the one who saved your life today, in the feilds. You owe your gratitude to my, questionable powers."  
  
The man hesitated, and the townsfolk who had been silently rallying behind the cloaked preist, faltered as he thought uncertainly on the new issue. It was true; he had indeed been one of the men the Necromancer had aided in the feild. One of the men whom he had saved from almost certain death. The preist, staring in his confusion, had already half drawn his blade, but had stopped abruptly. "Put that knife away before you hurt yourself." Said the Necromancer softly, confidently. "What is your name, oh grave sorcerer?" came another voice. The other man from the feild had appeared beside the first preist. He now wore heavy, clinking armor and a solemn, inquireing look on his face. "I am Dura'g Hathrel, son of Hathrel Gargish of Kurast." Came the reply. The Necromancer had a name. It contented the second man. He smiled beneath his thick beard and moustache, jet black and kind upon his handsome face.  
  
The first preist, sword still drawn, shouted angrily, and all eyes turned to him. "He is a Necromancer, young Paladin; and an evil one at that! You saw yourself what evil he commanded upon the feilds this morning!" "Yes, indeed I did," spoke the Holy Knight softly, still staring into the Sorcerer's narrowed eyes. "And I witnessed quite clearly how he saved my sister's very life."  
  
At this the room gasped.  
  
"So she is a Paladin also." Asserted the Necromancer, it did not suprise him, evidently. "No, but she will hold hers in a fight, Dura'g son of Gargish." The Necromancer started; he had spoken the correct address to a person in Kurastian form. "Call me Durag Lithin'thuar." He said, "It is my full, rightful name." "Alright Durag Lithin'thuar; thank you for saving my sister's life." "It was the least I could do; she was in deplorable health. . ." "Yes, but she is better now, Preist of Rathma religion." The Paladin said, answering the Necromancer's unasked question.  
  
The Sorcerer had now glided silently across the room and past the glaring preist to sit across from the Paladin. "Now, righteous disciple of the New Religion; what service can I do for you?" he asked, smiling. "He may do nothing but burn in hell!" cried the first preist, but the Paladin brought up his hand to silence his companion. "Calm yourself, Bometh, this worthy Sorcerer could help us indeed in our quest to end the hatred plundering this land." The preist sat down, disapointed in his companion's trust of the dirty Necromancer. "This evil you speak of. . .be it the lord of. . .?" The Necromancer questioned softly. ". . .The Lord of Terror himself, yes, my freind, for surely you too have come on a similar quest. I have heard the Preists of Rathma are too rallying to battle the risen lord this third time. One great Preist of your time also aided my order during the wars against his brothers and him many years ago." "The sense of evil we have inately brought me to this desolate place. I feel he is here even now, in this very room, but I cannot find the source of this arcane power." Whispered the Necromancer, revealing the purpose of his own quest. "Tommorrow, I will leave for the desecrated temple of York, through the Dulathian wilderness not six miles from here. That is where the newest gate to hell has been opened, we beleive." Replied the Paladin, receiving a sharp look from Bometh at his side.  
  
The Necromancer smiled; tommorrow he would fight again, and he gained confidence in his abilities with this strange new Knight by him; "I will accompany you on this quest into darkness; the preists of Rathma have sent me to fullfill this evil task you have allied yourself to." He said, "Besides, I am not finished showing your companion the full scope of my cultish powers." He smiled. Indeed he concealed a power or two not yet used by him on this budding quest. . . 


	5. Battle in the Forest

As promised, there will be more fighting in this one, and a suprise ending that I hope wil leave you in a bit of a trembling suspense. Will he. . .? You'll just have to read. And the Plot thickens. A reminder, I do not own Diablo or any of the characters, so the producers cannot sue me.  
  
-J. Diabolico-  
  
Before the sun had risen the Alliance had set out, Durag having left his quarters and met up with the Paladin whom he would share his quest with, (for the time being,) and his annoying, squabbling comrade, Bometh.  
  
By sunrise, the companions had crossed the threshold of the city and were making thier way into the Dulathian wilderness; a dark and hideous trail leading through the woods of Garma and passing on towards the local capital, York. They had still not happened across any demons as they took thier first steps across the shadow into the Garma woods, not three miles from York. . .  
  
"This is unatural." Whispered the Necromancer cautiously.  
  
"I agree; no birds sing in this desolate place. . .not a sound is to be heard above the creaking of the trees. . ." complied the Paladin. Looking across at him, the Necromancer realized that he still did not know his name.  
  
"Say, Holy Knight . . ." he began, but was cut short by a horrifying sound; "Get down!"  
  
A second later a sabre swooped past overhead, slicing through the thick air above Bometh's balding head. The weapon sunk with a heavy Thud deep into the wood of a far tree, and quivered there, reverberating a curious sound through the silent forest.  
  
"Demons!" cried the Paladin, "By the gates of Heaven; may you fight as well as you did yesterday, Necromancer!" for indeed a mighty horde of demonic shapes now burst headlong through the underbrush before them, dark green and brown figures at full speed and closing fast. Bometh whimpered pitifully and brought his staff to bear, and the Paladin quickly drew his mighty broadsword in the shaded light.  
  
The Necromancer, realizing his amulet of stregnth was still gone from his neck, cautiously began to chant in his sharp, old-age tounge. . . "Haladin, mu' a jigar, a gighad; A GIGHAD!" he cried, his hand once again spread out over the frightful scene, his eyes closed in deep concentration.  
  
"Necromancer, hold to sword and fight!" shouted the Paladin; this was no time for silly tricks; there were too many of the little wretches!  
  
"A GIGHAD, ELBERE' NI, A GIGHAD!" and suddenly, as if out of nowhere, there erupted a roaring white light from the ground in front of the nearest demons. Twisting and intermingling, gleaming white shapes could be made out, shifting and interlocking to form. . .  
  
"A wall of Bone!" exclaimed the astonished Knight. "A barrier of pure bone. . ." but the Necromancer was still deep in chant and summoning the reserves of his streghnth; to summon a wall of that size was indeed a toll took heavily upon his mind, and he could already feel it crumble beneath the blows of the tiny monsters on it's latter side. . .  
  
The Knight's assistant crossed himself as the first of the demons broke through; a twisted look of satisfaction worn across it's hideous visage. The sword of the Paladin fell heavily across it's shoulders, and the tiny head rolled blankly up to the feet of Bometh, who promptly vomited.  
  
"Namu' ih nish-karesh. . .Namu a Elbere' ji'-kushar!" came a haunted chant from the lips of the meditating Sorcerer. Durag, still chanting, took up his twisted kris in one pale hand, and, holding out his unarmored arm, cut a sit on the underside of his forearm, and felt the blood trickle slowly from his body. . .  
  
"Namu' ih nish-karesh, Namu a Elbere' ji'-kushar. . ." and with a final chant, made a swift motion with his sword arm, now wetted in blood, and the earth began to rumble. A single drop of blood slid to the point of the kris; then dropped to the cold earth. Upon contact, the dark speck of red began to rapidly spread outwards, more and more blood appearing from this single drop; and it began to swirl and bubble upwards from the steadily growing pool. Soon a shape was discernable; and feet, red and horrible, took the first steps of false life; a giant, grotesque creature, bubbling and veinous, stepped quickly up to the nearest hole in the wall and began hacking viciously at the demon limbs jutting through with massive, glowing claws.  
  
Bometh had fainted and the Paladin, mighty as he was, took a step back in astonishment and fear, as the creature relentlessly sealed the holes in the bone with the corpses of demons.  
  
"What in the name of God is that?" uttered the transfixed and terrified Knight. The Necromancer opened his eyes slowly, they were glowing green once more, and said, in a voice not all his own;  
  
"He is me, and I him. Made of my blood, he holds within him the spark of life that I hold even now within myself. His pain, I feel, my death, he suffers, and his every victory brings blood and life flowing back into my veins."  
  
Indeed, as the Paladin watched in fascination, the bloody slit in the Sorcerer's forearm was healing with the every merciless fall of the monster's claws. If the thing was covered in the blood of a mass of enemies, or if it was in it's own horrible, dark red skin, was impossible to tell. It only fought harder the more holes opened up. There needed be no commands, for the creature instinctivly knew it's master's biding; it was, after all, the same life they both shared . . .  
  
Soon the holes and jagged gaps became too much, however, and neither the bloody monstrosity nor the brave Paladin could hold back the issueing demons with all the combined force of thier fury, and many great peices of the barrier began to crumble and break away rapidly. Soon the companions were in up to thier elbows in demonic creatures.  
  
Swinging viciously with thier swords and daggers, (and in one case, bloody claws,) the groups of heroes slowly ripped a circle about themselves from demons, and the fainted Bometh was dragged to the middle by the obedient creature of blood.  
  
Although the Paladin fought both viciously and with the heart of five strong men, the horde was closing, and other, strange creations of hell had begun to filter through the trees to aid the falling demon hordes. Soon the companions were surrounded by not only the green skinned, vile bastard demons, but filthy, rotted dead as well. Some evil force indeed had been at work to summon the forces of the dead to the aide of the Dark Lord, and the Necromancer was amazed at the completeness to which the undead soldiers preformed ther master's will. Some enemy Necromancer was obviously at work against them and had been able to succssesfully ressurect not one, nor two, but tens upon tens of glaring, rotten corpses to do his or hers evil bidding.  
  
Doing his best to summon up some skeletons of his own, and sensing that, whatever Necromatic power was at work upon these undead, it was from far awy that it hailed, not anywhere within the forest, at least. So, this knowledge gained, the Necromancer set about creating an army of his own minions to aide him in battle. Soon, six gleaming skeletons slashed thier way into battle with the two men and vicious blood figure. This would do for now, the evil army was pushed back for the moment and the heroes received a much needed breather.  
  
"There is some other evil force at work, to have brought back these dead soldiers to reanimated life, brave Paladin of the west." The Sorcerer informed the Knight, both at eachother's backs, circling and awaiting the next onslaught of hellish spawns.  
  
"Please, call me Damathodor, it is the name I was ordained to in my service to the almighty." Came the reply, tired but still very much willing to carry on. The Necromancer felt a bit envious at the knight's confidence in close battle. It was very rare for a Sorcerer of his type to fight his own battles. . .  
  
"May Trag'Oul give me stregnth. . ." beseeched the Necromancer, and at once his hellish armor appeared magically and enclosed his body seamlessly. The Paladin stood amazed, and could only shake his sweating head in astonishment as the Necromancer's weary face was replaced by the horrific bone helm, sharp horns and all.  
  
"You must teach me this magic someday. . ." began the Knight.  
  
"In order for this, you must be in the favor of the mighty Trag'Oul, the dragon on whose back the world rests." The Sorcerer's voice replied from beneath the fanged teeth of the skull-helm. Then the hollow eyes began to glow menacingly as the Necromancer began to chant once more, and the demons came rushing again.  
  
Slolwy the battle went, alternating fighting and resting on both sides, and no clear victory was to be seen, as the warriors of humanity wearied, so the hordes of hell fell beneath thier blades, and the claws of the mighty blood demon. Eventually, as the day wore on into the late of night, the demonic pygmies began slowly to diminsh in number. They were either all dead, or to tired or discouraged to continue to do battle. Corpses of hundreds of demons and a few undead monstrosities littered the forest floor, and the constant ferocity of the indefatigueable skeletal warriors terrified even the most fanatic of the living demons.  
  
Only the undead were not discouraged, and onwards they marched, unable to feel pain or pity, or see the extreme danger of the warriors they marched to. Many fell, but they were hard to kill, much harder to quell than the demons, who could feel and be daunted by the pain of a sword. Soon the two men were alone with a very weak blood minion, a skeleton with a broken sword, and an unconscious, useless preist.  
  
"Damathodor, brave knight, step you back from the fray, for my magic will finish this or destroy me. . ." the weary Sorcerer commanded, setting the bloody monster and his skeletal fighter to protect him as he began to carefully contact the dying spirits of the hundred of corpses around them. It would be no use summoning hundred of more skeleton warriors, it would be too much for him to control, but what he could do was force out the last bits of dying lives from several large groups of the bodies, which would result in a powerful. . .  
  
An explosion ripped through the silence and at least fifty carcasses of slain demons began to violently tremble, and then simply exploed in violent force. Shards of bone shot through the ranks of the undead, and many were cleaved and fell. All that remained were headless, wandering corpses, which in due time fell in slow and silent agony.  
  
The battle was over.  
  
The Paladin crossed himself wearily and turned to his companion, who had finished the fight. "That was truly the most spectacular-," but he saw his companion fall heavily to his knees, then, as is lifeless, slump backwards onto his legs, his head hitting the ground deftly. The blood creature crumbled and fell to peices, and the skeleton warrior immeadiatly imploded and crumbled to the earth.  
  
"Oh no." Whispered Damathodor. 


	6. The Awakening: A Call to Arms

In suspense? Great! Of course, I would'nt kill of my main character so soon, or would I. . .? It's in the reading today, so don't stop reading, and keep the reveiws coming! Also, I have received some bad news; apparently, I messed up uploading the chapter 3, and it's only a partial. It'll be fixed as soon as possible, it contains considerably more action scenes!  
  
-J. Diabolico-  
  
The mere fact that time stood still was irrelevant. Time mattered not without one's body, or physical form. Onward speed the soul of the Sorcerer, images swimming past and memories long forgotten revived from some distant, dusty plain of the mind.  
  
Too loudly rang the sounds of pain; for pain in the subconcious plane is represented in dull, unpleasant noises; the reoccurance of past events;  
  
"Damathodor, brave knight, step you back from the fray; for my magic will finish this or destroy me. . ." Screams. Explosions. Darkness.  
  
"Oh no. . ."  
  
The silence suddenly collapsed, and the rushing noise of the real world flooded back to the Necromancer. Bright, painful light shocked his eyes and battered his sore brain; he gasped as he blinked away the pain,  
  
Pain had returned to his physical form. . .He lived. . .  
  
"Where in the name of the order am I." He asked, to no one in particular, seeing nothing but a dimming and darkening room in the shade of his returning vision. He was suprised to hear a reply, from some still-bright area off to his right. . .  
  
"You are back in Bridgetown, good sir."  
  
"Damathodor? Young knight?"  
  
"No; I am Marie, the sister of this brave soul which you have named." Durag blinked in confusion. Recent memory had not yet graced his mind.  
  
"The girl from the feild. . ." he said, though not really recalling anything solid; only a simple fact.  
  
"Yes! Yes! You saved us!" the girl cried, happily clapping her hands together. He saw her now, brown hair falling down to shoulder legnth, dark brown eyes twinkling in the flickering candlelight. "You gave me this, do you remember?" she inquired, holding the strange enchanted peice of metal into the gleam of the light. He reached for it, frowning, his hand wrapping loosely around it's cold metallic shape.  
  
"It is the amulet of enduring stregnth." He said, memories flooding back and reorganizing themselves rapidly in his groggy head. "You keep it." He told her, pushing it away. "I am confident enough in my other abilities now. . ."  
  
He sat up, with her assistance, and coughed violently, cursing, he tried his legs. In a few short minutes he was quite awake and standing in the dark room with a single candle. It was not his room, but it was obviously at the hotel.  
  
Seeing his frown, the girl, Marie, explained;  
  
"Your room was locked, hard as we tried to open it; not even the innkeeper's key would force it to yeild." She said, smiling at Durag's strange look. "This is my room."  
  
Indeed he looked about and saw the various artifacts and equipment women were so very dependent upon; brushes, a mirror, two loose leather bags of what could only be some sort of fragrant perfume, and several other female ornaments and gadgets. His armor lay in a corner, his real armor, solid steal and jet black, but his bone helm and wrist band lay crumbling there, as well. He waved his hand groggily and they both disintegrated into nothingness. The girl stared wide eyed. She had never seen magic before.  
  
"How did you. . .?" came the question, but he looked up at her impatiently with a look that said, it would take too long to explain. And she let it go, her pretty eyes dropping to the floor. She looked up, then, a bright smile on her face. "You must be famished!"  
  
In the kitchen, Damathodor sat playing a card and dice game with two or three other men, and Bometh haunted the corner, just out of the circle of light and looked away quickly as the Necromancer met his ashamed gaze. He had fainted. . .  
  
"Durag! You are well!" cried Damathodor happily, seeing his smiling sister clutching the wobbly Sorcerer on the last stair. Her arms wrapped still within his when they reached the bottom, and he looked up at her with a slight frown as she lingered a moment and stepped away, smiling mischeviously. Her hands trailed away from his arm as she walked off, looking over her shoulder at him, and he could not help but submit as his eyes were sucked uncontrollably downwards as she walked away. Very nice. . .  
  
"Durag." Spoke the knight, his voice steely and serious. He had, no doubt, witnessed the scene. "Durag, we have a lot to catch up on, you were out for three days!" he said, his tone changing to one of lighter melody. His sister had gone to the bar and was eyeing the Sorcerer with unabashed interest. But Durag dared not turn an inch. "You are no doubt very hungry; Barkeep, some food for our hero!" he shouted, and Durag, pretending to gaze over at the beaming bartender, took a quick look at Marie. She had not turned away, and smiled beautifully as his eyes met hers. In his line of work, it was rare a woman even looked upon you with anything but profound disgust or utter terror. . .  
  
"What has passed in my. . .abscence?" he asked, turning around again to face the table. Damathodor looked upon him with warning. He had not been convinced of the purpose of Durag's backward glance.  
  
"Much." He said, his voice menacing. The Necromancer pretended not to notice, and stared at the knight with a look of innocence and confusion.  
  
"Like. . .?" he tried. The Paladin's face shifted, and he sighed wearily.  
  
"The evil armies of the far west have emerged en masse from the woods of Dulathia. Many tales of ill omen have reached us here in Bridgetown. Horrible mostrosities creep across the land, and all are full of dread for the darkness falling around us." He spoke sadly, and softly, but the bar had gone silent, and most heard. A few shifted uneasily and the smile upon Marie's lips dropped and her face took on a solemn look. "Much evil has befallen the land in a short time. Many refugees trek to this town every day; it is apparent that some grave evil has befallen the mighty town of York; and one strange traveller speaks of a powerful sorceress there, who commands the army of the dead with wrath and fury."  
  
The Necromancer sat silent; could that have been the force he had sensed? Some other powerful Magician calling up her own ranks of dead warriors. . .  
  
"Is this army far from here?" he asked finally, looking up from thought.  
  
"Yes, they are concentrated for now, around York. They will soon march, I fear."  
  
"There was a strange traveller who gave you this news? Is he here?"  
  
"Not at the Inn, but he stays the night here, in the town. We will find him after you have eaten." The Paladin replied. Durag sat back to think and soon the food came, carried by Marie, who set it down gingerly before the sorcerer. He looked up at her and she beamed down upon him; he began to smile slowly as he had not done for a long time, but Damathodor's grunt of annoyance brought his eyes down to his plate. Marie stalked away angrily after giving her brother a venemous stare, and sat at the bar to entertain herself with the other women there. The Necromancer ate greedily; suddenly realizing his enormous appetite, but soon the Knight's silence brought his gaze upwards. They met eachother's eyes, and the Paladin nodded over Durag's shoulder towards Marie. Durag needed not look to see she was there.  
  
"Be carefull, my freind; she is. . .well loved by many. . ." the Paladin said, still looking at his sister, sadly. Durag frowned as he watched the knight's melancholy features and asked;  
  
"Why do you tell me this?" Damathodor looked down at his companion sharply.  
  
"You know very well why I do this." He said sternly. "She looks upon you as she has not at any man for a long time; she would not leave your side during the past days, neither did she relent in her fast, so determined was she to devote every moment to your health. She barely knew you, yet she sees to you with care and compassion."  
  
"She is, a beautiful woman." Said the Necromancer cautiously, "I would not have any harm come her way, though I know her not well, she is in my thoughts as this darkness falls. I will have no danger befall her."  
  
The Knight looked long into his ally's face, and finally looked down as Durag did not turn away nor falter. He nodded slowly and relented.  
  
"I feel she is is safe with us to protect her. Either of us." He said. Then looked up threateningly; "But if you. . ." he began, but the Sorcerer's hand stopped him; he waved dissmissingly.  
  
"I would not think to do so foolish a thing as harm the only beautiful creature who has of yet shown he such devotion. Her attitude astonishes me, and I will hold to her safety as I would if my own life were upon it." He told the Paladin softly. Reassured, Damathodor smiled happily and called for more drinks.  
  
"Tonight we will sleep soundly, and visit our strange traveller in the morn." The knight said. Bometh had ventured towards the table and sat with the two. They began to discuss the situation at hand, and made plans to venture forth in the morning to test the might of the enclosing army.  
  
One thing was clear, given the information they hoped to obtain from the stranger in town, they would have to make thier way into the heart of the darkness; into York itself, from which so many fled in these dreadful days. 


	7. Battle of the Crusaders

Well, last chapter set the mood, and this one will not dissapoint in action. In response to a reveiw; The Necromancer's seemingly amazing feat of 'corpse explosion' was accomplished using not one, but several different corpses as targets. It still seems a bit unrealistic by the game's standards; but hey; allow me some creativity here! Anyway, thanks for the suggestion and I'll try to keep the powers within reason. Also, I'll have to look up some of the Paladin's powers, because I've only played using the Necromancer so far.  
  
-J. Diabolico-  
  
Durag awoke early, and sat up in his bed; still wearing his loose garb from the previous evening. He had perhaps had too much to drink, and it had taken it's toll. However, this did not stop him from making his way to the dresser to quickly re-dress and comb back his growing hair. Still as white as a ghost. . .he thought, and scratched at his scraggly beard and moustache. He did'nt want to risk shaving with his kris; he somehow hated being cut on the face more than anywhere else. . .  
  
The two holy men and Marie were both awaiting him in the bar, sitting by the window and waiting for sunrise. It was still an hour of or so.  
  
"Good Morning, company." He grumbled in his dizziness; way too much ale. . .  
  
"Slept well, my pale headed comrade?" asked Damathodor kindly, a hand reaching up to wipe the sleep from his groggy face. He was still tired as well.  
  
"Good morning, Mr. Lithin'thuar, I see the ale left you as well as my brother." Marie smiled up at him. He smirked.  
  
"Please, my lady; call me Durag; for my culture permits close freinds to do so." He said cordially. It had been a long time since he had been so polite to anyone, much less a beautiful damsel. His reward was a broad grin and the wary, angry glance of Bometh.  
  
"So we are close freinds, you and I?" she flirted.  
  
"So we are, I say, if you would but allow me the pleasure. . .?"  
  
"Indeed I would!" she exclaimed happily, jumping of to fetch some breakfast meal or other.  
  
"She is a nice woman." He affirmed, sitting opposite of the knight. It was then did he happen to see the shadowy figure next to the knight. "Who is this strange shade?" he asked, frowning in the gloom.  
  
"This," replied Damathodor, "Is the knight Galbad'jihadri of the royal gaurd of York. He is our knowledgable traveller."  
  
"I've never yet laid eyes upon a true Necromancer before in my life," spoke the awed knight, "But my father has told me tales; dreadful, horrible tales of the cult of Rathma. . ."  
  
"I assure you, I will do you no harm, young knight of York. I am here to but help further your cause."  
  
"And what cause is that, preist of Rathma? The retaking of York, no doubt!" The man scoffed. "It is a hopeless quest, to go into battle against her. The Sorceress. It would be wiser to seek refuge in the east."  
  
"We will do no such thing. But we need your help to undertake such a precarious task; please tell us all you know of this demon witch in the city." Requested the Paladin.  
  
"Yes; how may we defeat her?" seconded Bometh eagerly. He received a withering, hateful look from the knight of York.  
  
"You cannot defeat her, my young, stupid freind. She will destroy you as she destroys everything. Her powers are grave, and she shows no mercy. Fire, Ice, death surrounds her." He shuddered. "and hate. When you step near her, you feel cold and hateful, like you are nothing; a writhing, meaningless worm to her power. Many of my comrades died in the fight against her; her powerful spells immolating and burning whole columns into ashes, think of it!" he cried now, staring terrified into the faces of the other men. "Dreadful spells of ice enveloped but more, and hundreds fell in gasping freeze, the cold snuffing out the heat of life in their poor souls. And beasts! What horrible, ghastly creatures she commanded! Tearing and ripping our troops like so many helpless dolls."  
  
"Try to stay calm," ventured the Paladin, reaching to comfort the fellow knight.  
  
"No!" screamed the other, "I will NOT! I will not calm down untill you see! You will fall! You CANNOT defeat her! HUNDREDS of us died to learn this dreadful lesson! Must you good men waste your lives? To ask how to defeat her. To ask ME, the creation of her evil force, and malignant will, to ask ME of all the men on earth how to overpower this fell monster! She is horrible, and inevitable. Let yourselves not fall beneath her gaze, for I promise you; she will KILL you all!"  
  
The room was quiet except for the occasional sob from the defeated knight. He was absolutely terrified of this thing, so foul as he had made it to be. After a while the Paladin stood, and te preist and the Sorcerer followed suit.  
  
"Brave knight, we will combat this evil; for we have no fear of it." He said to the pitious man. "Let the spells come, for we shall have our own, before the end." And with that he left the poor man, sitting with his tears, and headed towards the door. Bometh followed and Durag made to go after them. He was stopped by Marie on the way out. The sobbing man still crying his prophecies of doom and helplessness; of fleeing to the east.  
  
"Durag, please do not let yourself be fooled by my brother's word-play; he is still in training, and has not yet mastered his skills with the blade; he is strong, but young. Watch over him, for he will not let me come." She begged, her eyes pleading, "And also watch for yourself; for although your powers are more impressive than I have ever seen or heard of, I fear for your safety as I would for my own. Return to me."  
  
He stared long into her eyes, so deep and brown they were, and they caught him offgaurd, for he had never respected nor admired a woman so; his upbringing had been favoring of the male sex, and women were not allowed to learn the full art of the undead were he had come from. This woman was no weakling, however, and she possesed within her more wisdom than she made obvious in her appearance.  
  
"I will return, my lady." He managed softly, his expression not changing from one of resolute manliness. "I will come back. . .to you." He added.  
  
She kissed him. Not long, but quickly and hastily. She blushed afterwards, but retained her gracefulness.  
  
"Go, brave Durag of the Rathma; my brother and the preist await you." She told him, looking away quickly. He still looked upon her, but was drawn away by the calls of the knight outside. He stepped away. "Wait!" came the woman's voice behind him, and he whirled again, anxious. She grabbed his hand, and, once again pressed her lips to his, longer and more gently this time, and when she pulled away, the amulet of stregnth reated in his palm. "You will need this, no doubt."  
  
He thanked her and then left, her hand rolling off of his as he pulled regrettably away from this brave, beautiful, wise woman, and walked out into the strange, red dawn of the cold town. The quest now stood before them. His face was solid; ready, and he started off without looking back, holding his course next to the brave, strong Paladin, and the heavy, nervous preist. They walked on into danger.  
  
The knight of York sat still upon the chair at the Inn, peering up loathingly at the maiden standing in the doorway. "They are going to die, you know." He whispered. The girl turned slowly upon him and then, tossing up her pretty chin, walked pridefully away from the lonely and destroyed man. He let his head fall back into hs arms, and was silent.  
  
The demon hoards had been attacking their flanks all the day long, jetting in for quick, vicious jabs, but nothing long term or heavy came, and no clear strategy was evident.  
  
The preist, Bometh had fought quite well, thought the Sorcerer to himself; he had not expected the man to do anything but faint upon sight of the first monsters, which had appeared quickly upon thier departure from the main road into the forest once again. Bometh hit with precision and accuracy using a cracked old bow and a plentiful supply of arrows.  
  
"Bometh here," said the Paladin at one point, slicing easily through the disorganized and uncoordinated demons, "Once won an archer's award at the old Monastary, do you remember, Bometh?"  
  
The Preist nodded, but concntrated hard and let loose a shaft which lodged itself with a heavy thunk into the skull of a far-off creature. The Necromancer was impressed, as he fired away with his seemingly unending supply of boneish spears, tearing and rending the green and red flesh as they shot, gleaming and white, through the disarrayed masses. Indeed, this holy friar may yet prove himself worthy. . .  
  
With their emergence from the dark forest, the team confronted quickly a mass of undead. The sky had suddenly taken a dark hue, and the hordes became notably thicker, and more organized, leaders screaming orders in their horrible, brute language. The Necromancer used his basic knowledge of this to try to help ease the assaults.  
  
"The creatures plan to come from the left, hard and suddenly, hold too, Bometh, fire your shafts at that tall creature, over there!" Bometh, although doubting the validity of the Sorcerer's arguments, promptly pierced the tall monster's armor and down fell the sole leader of the left flank. The attack fell apart when no new orders came.  
  
"This is too easy!" exclaimed the Paladin; he slashed out hard to his right, then spun a dashed another creeping minion on his left. With each blow struck he seemed to murmer a silent phrase, but the Necromancer could hear it not. He was too busy pointing out targets for the eager Bometh. The battle went well, the Sorcerer feeling somehow warm and clear as he fought harder and harder, he had never endured the stress of battle so well nor long. It was then that he sensed the power at work over him. The Paladin was whispering prayers and protectons over the group as they fought, and the heavens of his religion shone down upon them. Even the deathly Necromancer felt light in heart and drove on with tenacity and bravery, aligning himself temporarily with this holy aura.  
  
Soon, however, the hordes thickened ever more and new, hideous creatures expelled forth from steaming holes in the terrain; tall, dark eyed beasts roared out and smashed viciously through the crowd in their way to the group of men. The Behemouths grunted hoarsly as yet more of their kind and others poured suddenly from the caves dotting the earth. The numbers of the undead tripled and surrounded the group, and the Necromancer felt his stregnth ebbing. . .  
  
"A GIGHAD! ELBERE A GIGHAD!" he cried in desperation, the heavenly stregnth leaving him as the Paladin took a mighty blow on his helmet. Bometh staggered back as if he too had been struck. But a vast white wall had sealed the entrance to one of the large caves; the gleaming bone cutting off the passage of monsters from beneath. Another whole was stopped, then two more, and one remained. This the Necromancer had to wait upon; for he was exhausted from the magical exhertions, and he retrned wearily to his swordplay, spinning and ducking wildly and seemingly at randomn, but demons all about him had fallen. He felt not the stregnth to summon anything of masterful skill, and thus settled to rest himself through battle. He knew without the amulet he would have fallen long ago. . .  
  
"Durag!" grunted the Knight to his back, "A spell! A spell of evil!" and the Sorcerer turned, just in time to witness the rise of a slain beast, ghastly and cold it stood and life filled it's eyes again. The began to concentrate, hard, and the foul corpse warrior dropped yet again, but immeadiatly began to raise itself, of some other powerful will.  
  
"JANGA!" he bellowed at last, and splintered the creature's skull with a spear of enchanted bone. It did not raise itself again. But other began to revive themselves. Many others. Exhausted, the Ncromancer quickly took a long and thirsty drink from a mysterious black bottle, and felt the aura flow back into him. The demons came, and he but smiled. . .  
  
"O those both on heaven in my prayers, yet be them not thy Holy guide, deliver us from this foul evil, and grant us stregnth to do your bidding. . ." the Paladin was praying rapidly, while still swinging angrily over the oncoming creatures. He felt some power creep through his veins, but it was ephemeral, fleeting, this would not last long. . .  
  
Suddenly the horrible cry came up; and the hordes trembled, terrified in their extremity; and began falling back from themselves; for the mighty host of revived creatures, brought forth by the dark hand of their own sorceress leader, had begun to wildly attack the demons themselves. Skeletal warriors exploded forth from the corpes they slew, and soon the army was in terrible disarray; the Paladin screaming holy, scalding phrases at them as he; glowing with heavenly light, drove through them as a fish would through water, his form surrounded in light, a holy beam on one side of the feild, and the other fellow, foul and dark, had somehow defeated the magic of their own master; had stolen away the dead from their service, and was crying out in a horrible language and coaxing forth curses of dreadful effect upon them. The demon hordes fled. The walls of bone covering the caves ceased to break from blows beneath, and the unassuming Bometh took such a stance and picked off at least twelve more demons as the group fled, back into the wood, in the oppossite direction the men were heading. There was soon a clear path to the city. 


	8. Relationships

Suddenly an explosion of reveiws. . .so very many encouraging voices! Thank you all who have reveiwed me, and I'll get back to work right away on some more chapters, this being the first of two. Hope you enjoy the developing plot, (I'm getting very worked up trying to think up new scenarios and situations, and I've never written a love interest between a Necromancer and, well. . .ANYBODY before, so, I'm doing my best. . .  
  
-J. Diabolico-  
  
The town was in joyous celebration upon the return of the heroes; The men troomping in in their grimy, sweaty armor, bloodstained swords hanging tired and worn at their sides, and the archer's fistfull of broken bowstrings a testiment to his share of kills in battle. Already the bar was crowded and cheerful upon the entry of the weary warriors. Marie stood beaming in a well-lit corner, happily assisting the barmaid serve up drinks to the rowdy and happy townsfolk. The heroes had proven unbeatable! They had crossed through the testng fires of the darkest wood and returned safely! Perhaps, thought many, perhaps this land had hope after all!  
  
"I have returned to you, my beautious lady. . ." murmmered the exhausted yet proud Necromancer, his kris clinking softly against his side as e bent his stiff joints to kneel before her. He took her hand as she looked about them, all eyes were on them. Damathodor the brave Knight stood nearby, watching from within a circle of eager young children, overjoyed to see a true Paladin and his mighty sword. Marie's soft hand slid into Durag's rough and calloused hand, like the finest velvet upon a hard and jagged stone, and she smiled ever more warmly upon her returned love, for that is what she had decided he was; her love.  
  
Bometh stood in the corner, happily reinacting the more incredible parts of the past battle; his preistly hands whirling wildly in the air as he shouted out excitedly and jumped up and down amidst the growing crowd. Damathodor had snuck away, outside the cheerful light of the busy Inn, and Durag, seeing the odd behavior of the knight, soon broke away from the silent and awed group of youths surrounding him and Marie.  
  
"Excuse us, young fellows, but could I. . .?" he asked their upturned and staring faces, he was already gently pushing through, pulling slowly Marie behind him; the children did not dare protest, for their mothers had warned them of the dreaded power of an angry Necromancer, but they still would have like to have stayed just a bit longer, trying silently to figure out the source of his immense magical aura.  
  
"Damathodor, my comrade; what is the matter; why do you sulk so?" he asked the knight outside. "Why do you not partake in the festivities inside? Surely you have earned it!" but the Paladin turned and was still gloomy, looking upon the two, his sister and his new companion, fast becoming a freind.  
  
"I sulk because I think ahead; these townsfolk are happy, and celebrate, yet I see no cause for happiness. We have not reached the gates of the beseiged city, but turned back at the road. Neither have we retaken this city, a feat not easily ignored!" he said, spilling out his missgivings on the future. Durag listened silently, and when his companion had finished said;  
  
"Damathodor, young knight whom I call freind; indeed these deeds are yet to be commited, but be happy in your success! For without your pure and holy alms, we all three would have indeed perished under the swords of some unworthy demonic being! Be wary of the future, yes, but do not dwell upon it, and let yourself be content with the now. I have no doubt that soon we will face these challenges you dread, and when we do, your hardy sword and the full stregnth of my power will be more than enough to halt the spread of evil across this land." The knight was smiling happily through his weariness by the time the Necromancer had finished, and agreed that he was right, and the time indeed would come, but he could now content himself in the mighty victory of the day.  
  
"Our passage to the city is assured; and soon we will see what that foul witch has to offer!" he cried bravely, swinging his battle-heavy sword into the air triumphantly.  
  
"But Damathodor!" cried Marie suddenly, "you are wounded!" and indeed from the underside of his arm there could be seen a scar, still caked in dried blood, from some heavy wound received in battle.  
  
"Oh," said the knight, "So I am. . ." and with that the worrisome sister drove him quickly up to the Inn's rooms to work some healing wonder upon his nasty hurt, leaving temporarily the side of her Sorcerer, who walked heavily back up to his room, stripped, and fell hard upon his bed, loosing himself immeadiatly in the deepest of sleeps.  
  
Arising late the next morning, Durag was happy to hear from the barkeep that his companion the knight had taken a stroll through town and was quite better from the wound he had evidently received. The Necromancer quickly set about looking for Marie.  
  
"Aha, there you are, my dear. . ." he exclaimed, finding her talking with a group of women from the town, she was only too happy to part with him to talk a while.  
  
"The women in town speak of you." She said mischeviously.  
  
"Oh?" was his uninterested reply.  
  
"You care not what they say, Durag?" she asked him, suprised at his indifference.  
  
"I care for the opinions of only one woman in this town." He told her, turning to face her and smiling as he had not done in so long. . . "And I take it from her expression, she is content in my behavior?" he laughed, seeing the girl trying hard not to laugh herself.  
  
"This is serious!" she exclaimed, "The women say you are dangerous! That before we arrived you were a troublemaker!" she told him, struggling hard now not to laugh at his curious expression of innocence.  
  
"Me?" he asked in pretended shock, "Me act in a troublesome manner? Never." He said indignantly.  
  
The girl had become serious, "They say you almost murdered a man. . ." she whsipered. His face relented a little.  
  
"He asked for it. . ." he tried, but her face was hard. "I swear! He was being intolerable, that brute!"  
  
She smiled slightly at his attempts to appease her;  
  
"I cannot be the wife of such a tempermental man!" she then exclaimed, "How would you behave if I forgot your supper one night?"  
  
He was laughed hardily as he imagined it, and she hit him softly but scoldingly on the shoulder, walking away with a look of pain on her face. He laughed a second more, then suddenly stopped short.  
  
"The wife of. . ." he peiced the woman's phrase slowly together. His face was shocked and stunned for a moment, then he looked suprised up at Marie. She laughed at him now, long and happily at her game.  
  
"Would you be so shocked and unhappy with me by your side?" she laughed at him. He now smiled and grinned sheepishly in his embarresment.  
  
"I'll show you, girl! Make a fool of ME!" he cried out laughing and lunging for her arm, which she pulled away with a cry. "Come here!" he called to her, but she darted away, breathless in laughter. He stood away, stalking her with a mischevious look in his eyes and made to jump at her again, but she laughed and stepped away quickly.  
  
Still avoiding him happily, she felt something cold and hard press against her back as she ebbed cautiously away from him. She turned her head, and she cried out in fear as she looked up into the hideous face of some giant brown beast.  
  
"What is that thing!?!" she screaed, jumping into the Necromancer's arms in terror. He just laughed evily.  
  
"He's beautiful is'nt he?" he asked her, "I can make them quite easily; just summon them up from the ground and there they are, made of the earth, they are." He told her, laughing at his trick to get at her. She still stared at the unmoving, muddy creature, it's earthy limbs pebbly and dark as it stood before them in the street alley-way. Then she asked;  
  
"It's not dangerous?"  
  
"Of course not!" he scoffed, "But if I tell hime to be. . ." he whispered in a mockingly threatening tone, tickling her back.  
  
"Stop it, you feind!" she yelled, trying to get away and laughing again. "You let go, or I'll kick you, I will!" he quickly let her go, but the dirty thing stepped up and blocked her passage. It seemed to smile as it barred the path. She whirled upon the smiling Necromancer. "Alright, Durag, move him or else!" she told him, smiling.  
  
"Or else, what?" he asked defiantly, smirking at her.  
  
"You would'nt have it do anything to me." She told him confidently, and stepped towards it bravely, "Now move, you brute, I'm going to pass, you hear?" and took another step. The thing stood, rock still, and did not heed her commands. She took a breath and took another larger step, bringing her right up to it, and made to go right through it. It suddenly jumped quickly out of her way as she jumped past it. The next instant it fell to peices and returned to the earth. The Necromancer only laughed some more and the woman walked back up to him and said;  
  
"I knew you would'nt let it do anything to me." Her voice was calmer now, not serious or mocking or anything, she simply saidit, and they both knew it was true. "You care too much for me, is that right?" she continued, asking him sincerely as she looked up into his shaded face in the alley. He smiled and took her arms into his rough hands.  
  
"Yes." He agreed. "I have never been a man to show himself to many." He breathed next, "It was not in my upbringing. My training began early, and my masters were restricting in my expiriences. Women, I am afraid, were not in the cirriculum of the dark arts I have been schooled all my life. Forgive my misunderstandings, Marie, but I am not used to loving or being loved by anyone." He told her.  
  
"You are all that I have ever expected or desired in a lover, Durag Lithin'thuar. I care not what your past was, if you are reluctant to disclose it too me. I only wish that we be together just now, like this." She said to him softly. He saw how she understood without knowing, exactly, going against all he had ever been taught by the elders, he released himself into the bliss of warm happiness. He loved this woman. 


	9. Forcing the Gates: The City of York

Sorry if that last one was a bit sappy for any of you, but I try hard to include the many aspects of a story into my writing. Besides, Durag Lithin'thuar has, (as many of his type,) been instructed to never give into the distractions of human emotion, In my mind it would be forbidden in so ominous an order as the preists of Rathma. Anyway, It's pretty much all action from here onwards, and lots of epic, earth-shattering battles, so hold on tight, buckle up, and here we go. . .  
  
-J. Diabolico-  
  
The sun rose crimson red over the horizon, and no thing with life made a sound. The town was silent and seemingly deserted. The shadows of the dread morning stretched out along the dark streets, agonized, twisted shades falling upon the few maggots and creatures daring or stupid enough to stray out of doors. The silent, ominous howling of the wind carried then, softly, impossibly quiet, a sound, muffled and drowned by the hate in the air. A thud of sole upon the cold, unliving earth. Then more, louder, and the shades fell and scattered back in horror in their terror. Three figures, cloaked in heavenly, unpreceived light appeared in the desolate place, rays of unabashed hope in the cold, red dawn. They made their way towards the west, even now walking away from the blood red horror that was the moring sun. Into the darkness they went, towards the unhly and hopeless place were evil resided, went to meet their fates.  
  
The forests, being now quite clear, were passed by these three fateful men, the Preist, the Knight and the Sorcerer, walking steadily in the drab and shadowy day, the day that was really a night, spreading light into the very corners of the deepest and most uninhabited caves they found along the way. They were as a candle, lit for the last hope of the beseiged town and the land even, cast into darkness, to stand it's tests and return, triumphant, as a blazing beacon of good over evil. This is how they came from the forest into the plains beyond, into the thickening dark and gathering evil. The first test had begun.  
  
"Cover the right side! Watch for the arrows!" bellowed the Paladin over the din of battle gear in the midday darkness. The darkest spire of the cathedral of York cut jagged and evil into the cloudy sky. A vast army of Darkness had come to meet them just before it's gates across the once beautiful plains of Corthumar, now defiled and nasty in the smothering air.  
  
"Arath' Illiuar!" exclaimed the braced and armored Necromancer, the thick darkness clinging to his form, horrible and fully mailed from head to foot was he, a nightmarish sight to the most hateful of foes. . .He held out a hand and it glowed expectantly in the semidarkness, ready for the test of will before him.  
  
The smaller, stockier form of the holy preist stepped proudly beside this menacing form, and drew back the fated bowstring to fire, releasing a holy bolt of heavenly fire upon his enemies. He knew now neither fear nor reluctance to face his fate this dreadful morn.  
  
The Knight, proud and brave, loudly recited the prayers and wishes to is mighty cause, holy and righteous as he drew his sword, the metal singing a deadly song as it slid easily from it's sheath, glittering brightly on the black plain, and forcing the shudder of condemnation down the spines of all who faced him now.  
  
A massive darkness faced them now, a gigantic congregation of hideous demons and tortured human forms; twisted and malformed in such agony and hate by the magic of some malignant and hateful being. They growled inhumanely in expectancy of the battle, but they, amoung the hundreds of beasts and dead warriors amassed here, were not in the mind to realice the danger they were not subject to; and so they trembled not, and stodd arrogantly in their detested columns and prepared to charge the beings of light in front of them. . .  
  
"Arath' Iluathar, Yendel O' Belincuar!" came a terrifying voice from the shadow, and a blazing fire leapt up around a column of evil troops, burning and scalding the foul beasts. Arrows flew into the crowded black hordes, passing through the wall of fire and landing, burning into the huddled bodies of the terrified dark ones, many fell. . .More terror bore down upon the black and twisted men in the army of darkness; for the sword of Athos had been unsheathed, and it tasted the blood of the sinful once more, cutting bravely through the confused masses of enemy, driving them irresistably into oblivion, it's weilder screaming those hated, beautiful holy words, the light burning and scatterng the dark ones in it's wake. The attackers were being attacked themselves, and the shadow glided quickly across the short space and through the wall of flame, passing through without a flinch the scorching and hellbourne tounges of fire to met his enemies in the face of battle. The Necromancer's hands tightened upon his black war hammer, enchanted as it was with his twisted and horrid power, the amulet blazing brightly from around his neck, he swung a mighty blow at the advancing line of demons, and the foremost creatures were knocked far and wide, flying over the fray and landing, faces smashed hideously inwards, among their comrades, who looked upon their dead bodies in horror. Spears of cruel, cold bone sped from the black gloved palms of the Sorcerer and tore their way viciously through the crowded mass. Many fell before it's merciless glare.  
  
The heavenly warrior, meanwhile, crusaded quickly through the other side of the feild, his truthful sword shining in undimmed light and glowing in holy white fire in it's heavenly fury, slicing burning through the trembling flesh of the corrupted men who dared stand in his way. One soldier of hell stepped up in arrogant courage, the leader of the group, and held his sword to that fated blade of the angels, and the Paladin, braver and more pure than the snows of the most sacred mountain, interchanged blows with this unworthy adversary from the ranks of the Dark Lord himself. Tall and black the evil warrior stood, pride and arrogance had aligned in this malignant creature, whose long years of corrupted and vile existance had sheilded him from fear of any man living. This horrible and fell man, now more of a devil than a human, stood in the way of the blazing sword of Athos, and the courageous man weilding it with such skill.  
  
"Your hour has come, Holy man; for no man do I fear, and many of your order have fallen under this very blade. Join them! Join the destryed hopes of your foolish comrades! Your Holy God is helpless and tame in my master's hate!" The creature exclaimed, a dreadful circle of men surrounding the pair as they circeld eachother warily.  
  
"Thy evil blade shall taste the blood of no more innocents beyond this instant, thou evil miscreation of Hell! Burn you shall along with your despichable master in his defiled hellish realm!" the light sage spoke, his proud and brave voice breaking through the dark around him. The lights of heaven opened up to shine down upon him, lighting the scene aglow; the men leapt back in horror, and the vile lord felt his cold heart tremble in fear, and he turned then and ran from the light; terrified. Then lines broke, and forward charged the brave knight to end his enemy's unjust and tortured existence.  
  
The Sorcerer was fighting still as he say the scene; watching the fleeing demon lord and the brave knight following him into the dark gates of the beseiged city, crying his holy and righteous alms as he hewwed the few men who remained to stand in his way.  
  
"Bometh, brave archer, set your holy bow upon the far columns of the demons to our right!" the arrows flew out imeadiatly in reply, cutting through the dark lines without reserve. The shadow stepped up, surrounded by his glowing and deadly assasin skeletons, mercilessly hacking through the falling prey, and the nightmare Necromancer swung his heavy enchanted hammer over the frray, sending the terrified creatures in all directions and summoning the darkest curses of his religion to his aide now; the demons felt the stregnth and power leave the width of their arms as the tall shade advanced upon them, and the harder they fought, the more they fell, it seemed.  
  
"Akathroir, Nemdraku." Came a dark voice and the shadow turned in the dim light to the source. A dark creature of Hell stood crouched in the fray nearby. A massive flaming limb tore out of the shadow and scattered a skeletal warrior nearby it, the glowing bones flying in every direction.  
  
"Janbar! Sukoso, tu' aire!" replied the Sorcerer in the forgotten language of his people. He had turned to the new enemy and hefted his hammer heavily into the air. The beastly Demon Lord lashed out violently, slashing dark claws at the enchanted weapon and sending it swirling from the hand of the Necromancer.  
  
"Now I shall taste the blood of one of my order!" spat the deadly apparation. It stepped silently from the crowd of demons around him. His imposing height coming into being seemingly from nowhere, the mage of the Rathma order advanced, hellish black flames springing from his form as he drew two dreadful black swords. The Necromancer smiled grimly and removed his helm slowly and tossed it into the group of awed dark ones watching. "I knew the fates had condemned you, Altruar, but to be used thusly. . ." he said sadly to the mage. The Sorceress in her dark tower at the top of the cathedral smiled in her concentration. The being also smiled as she did.  
  
"You are not fooled by your former master's spirit, Necromancer?" the being asked. The Necromancer mage's corpse speaking the words of it's controller, the Sorceress. It's swords whirled over it's head as it peered down haughtily at the Sorcerer before him. Bometh meanwhile fended off the few demons still advancing upon him, arrows flying impossibly fast from his bow and finding their targets flawlessly.  
  
"You are no more my master than you are the power you claim to be." The Necromancer replied to the reanimated mage. "The man whose spirit you comand here was truly once a man of might, but you have defiled his remains and befouled his spirit with your evil actions." He brought up his hands and held them before the powerful creature before him as the mage spirit attacked him. A vicious spectral claw scraped through a slit in the Necromancer's armor as he spun away quickly. Warm blood creeped slowly from the wound, the demon circle laughed and began to clap happily.  
  
"You shall pay for that with your head, vile demoness!" the Durag whsipered, and his body was suddenly enveloped in a greenish, evil glow as his eyes ignited in dark fire. The war of the magicians was about to be fought. The mage reincarnation stepped bodly into the glimmering circle of luminescence.  
  
"Halt wretched coward!" cried Damathodor loudly upon racing past a wrecked, burning house, following the fleeing trail of the retreating Demon Lord. "Face your fate, cursed one! Fly not from the Holy judgement!" He ran headlong around the near corner, coming into the cathedral's courtyard suddenly, and, seeing the hateful shade slip quickly under the archway of the second yard, the Knight gritted his teeth and pressed on, increasing his speed. . . 


	10. Heavenly Revelations

Had enough adventure yet? Well, if yes, . . . TOO DAMN BAD! Because here comes the next chapter; overflowing with fights, epic violence and pure Diablo action! Get ready, sit down, and refasten those seatbelts, cause this'll be one of the most action-packed chapters in the whole dang show!!! P.S., thanks for the reviews and keeping me motivated!  
  
-J. Diabolico-  
  
Concentrating hard, Durag the Necromancer eyed the mage spirit with scorn. The man it had once been had been a powerful, dark magician indeed, his own master from the early days of training; but his once meaning face was now twisted and full of forced hate as the Sorceress bent his returned spirit to her evil will. His master had died, but his corpse had apparently been ungaurded, and she had found it and summoned forth his forbidden powers for her hideous cause. Slowly the Necromancer circled the mage, amassing gradually for a sudden strike that would soon be ready. . .  
  
"Stop your stalling and come at me!" bellowed the enchante voice, "Be not fearful of your death, yet embrace it; being at the hands of your own master!" it taunted. The Sorcerer gritted his teeth in rage.  
  
"Faquarar, O' Elbere ni atu k' Sin Janga!" he cried explosivly, throwing forward his hands and releasing the summoned spirit he had been stregnthening. The ghost shot forth but then stopped, and hovered there, terrifying and transparently white in the dark night air. It was a wild and violent soul, trapped untill now in the unrelenting fires of hell in constant torment; if it could have attacked the Necromancer, it would have, but the summoning hex he had put on it was strong and held. He was invisible to it, as was Bometh, still firing away beneath the low storm clouds in the afternoon dusk.  
  
The demons screeched harshly and scittered away from the pale, eerie light emitting from the tortured and malignant spirit. They were not invisible. Neither was the lingering dark mage, and the Sorceress hesitated, not knowing what this new threat was as it surveyed the scene quickly, all these events taking place in a matter of seconds, the being charged suddenly and ferociously into the shadowy midst of the mage's body, screaming murderously in it's fury. The Necromancer smiled, and drew his kris. . .  
  
Damathodor meanwhile, was just making his way towards the second courtyard gates when the heavy wooden barrier doors slammed closed in front of him, halting his chase of te Demon Lord.  
  
"What magic is this?" he whispered to himself in confusion, and, drawing up his sword to break a hole into the thick wood, he heard a voice behind him boom out impressivly in the light, drizzling rain.  
  
"Brave Paladin; Damathodor, son of Borgoth of the Western sheild!" said the voice. Damathodor turned quickly and saw, much to his suprise, a man, cloaked head to toe in a tattered brown robe and a shadowy hood. A townsman, trapped here by the demons? He thought, frowning at the man's recognition of him. He had never been to York before. . .  
  
"Stay your blade from fighting my power, Paladin." Commanded the voice in a detached and humming tone. "You are destined to meet me here, and so receive the commands of the almighty whom all good things eminate."  
  
"The Angel Gabriel. . ." whispered the Knight then, and surely the cloak hovered off the ground, and swayed in the falling rain. Heaven sent, this mighty sage had travelled forth from the gleaing gates of the eternal heaven to address the young man thusly;  
  
"Observant, you are, brave Knight; the Angel Gabriel I am, returned here to your physical realm to deliver the fate and love of the true lord of heaven; You are destined to destroy the Lord of Terror once more!"  
  
"Oh, dearest of sages, the Lord of Terror I seek, for the heavens have called me to do their bidding, and faithfully I have obeyed!" cried the Knight in a wavering tone. Surely he was blessed.  
  
"Have high heart, mortal, for long has this time been in coming; the Sorceress in the high tower awaits your comrade, and the Lord of Terror she seeks to summon from the pits of hell on ths eve, if none shall come to stop her." The Angelic prescence told him, "The Lord of Vileness, Urakk Hurunar await you, and you chase him; many lives of men has he plagued this earth, preying upon the lives of the good and spilling the blood of the innocent to feed the cause of his evil lord, Diablo. On this eve he shall fall; for the blade of Athos shall serve you well and his reign of hate shall duly end. Be quick, though, for he holds within his evil folds the key to the chamber of the darkest one; and upon vanquishing this foe, turn your thoughts and feet to the dungeons of the disgraced cathedral and fly; for there, in the bowels of the proud church, lies the entrance to Diablo's hellish refuge, and the place where you must stop his latest attempt to return to this world!"  
  
The Knight bowed even lower and his body glowed with heavenly blessing as the Angel made quickly the sign of the preists over his shoulders and the doors flew open. Streagnth flowed quickly back into the arms of the Paladin, and this holy cause ignited the most honored of feelings in him. Upon looking up, the Angel Gabriel had dissappeared, and the quest stood now before him. He raced headlong through to the second courtyard and up to the very doors of the unholy cathedral.  
  
The dark mage screamed in dual agony; the ghost was tearing away at the reanimated corpse, and extinguishing the Sorceress' nasty power; the spectral hold she held upon the mage was also a binding of pain; and the ghost travelled quickly through this and exploded brightly into her dispicable lair. The mage spirit collapsed in unuse, and the demons scattered in horror from the kris of the avenging Durag, who slew them in great numbers as they retreated. 


	11. The Cathedral

I'll tell you, writing this is the most fun I've had in a long time! I've already figured out the rest of the plot, but YOU'll just have to wait a while and see how it unfolds! Keep the reveiws coming my way and get ready for some more! WARNING: This and the next few chapters are going to be a bit graphic; I was told not to post them as they are by some close advisors, but screw that!  
  
-J. Diabolico-  
  
The Doors to the great corrupted cathedral swung open idly as the Knight pressed upon them forcefully. He tripped and fell inside as they swung open easily, and landed in utter darkness. Standing and brushing himself off, he glimpsed torchlight ahead in the evil blackness, and slowly, cautiously made for it. A solitary form stood in the center of the torchlight; The Lord of Vileness, hefting his mighty blade, screamed frantic curses at the unmoving door leading up towards the top of the holy spire. The door would not open for him.  
  
"Slay him, Damathodor! Slay this wretched creature and open the doorway to hell to finish the Terror Lord!" came a heavenly voice, The Angel Gabriel was struggling with the Vile Knight and holding the door closed. Damathodor leapt nimbly up the stairs into the torchlight, sword drawn, and, without a word, ran headlong into battle with the cornered enemy. The Angel had yet again disappeared.  
  
"Curse you, persistant fool! Your bravery will destroy you!" screamed the dark knight in desperation.  
  
"Silence, vile one! Hold your evil tounge, for it will do me no harm!" replied the Paladin, feeling the Angel's stregnthening sheild of heavenly light. The blade of Athos glowed yellowish gold in the darkness and lit the room further; sending the dark knight stumbling backwards to escape the burning touch of light. Damathodor struck once, twice, then three times, the first blow knocking the dark knight's wretched sword from his hand as he sheilded his face with the other and held the sword feebly upwards to ward off the impending blow. The second strike struck the evil one hard under the chin, and, not ripping the armor of the black mail, sent the Vile Lord spiraling up and backwards with a pitious cry. He fell upon his knees with the final blow.  
  
"Never again shall one suffer under your twisted shadow, Vile scum!" cried the Paladin, raising his sword over the prone knight. The Vile Lord looked up hatefully. His helmet had fallen off during the beating, and his pale, white face glared through a hideous scar across one side of his face and a red, firey eye in his left eye socket. Horns had grown malformed from his cheecks and his teeth, pointed and sharp, were punctuated by a gnarled set of fangs. He had truly become more monster than man. He laughed.  
  
"I was blind, before." He said then. "I was wrong to asume I would live forever. The Lord lied to me, and I was corrupted." He laughed some more, then, and choked up blood, thick and gleaming red. "I was corrupted and made evil, and the Lord did nothing to sway me from thinking that with every kill I would become that much closer to immortality. He did nothing, but I knew."  
  
Damathodor stared at the mess before him and felt pity as he prepared to end the knight's corrupted existence.  
  
"Then you." Spoke the fallen one, hate dripping thickly from his words as his glowing red eye burned hellishly from it's charred and sizzling socket. "You came and ruined my greatest plan! My last and only chance at immortality! I was to be the vessl for the Dark Lord upon his leaving the folds of Hell, and live with him indefinately upon your world, destroying and killing and drinking your blood as it would run in rivers!" he spat as he spoke, saliva shooting from his mouth as he imagined the delicious blood flowing down his throat. He was a twisted and vile creature, turned into a vampiric wretch by the corrupting powers of the Lord of Terror. "I would have owned your world, me and the Master! We would have murdered your children and spilled the blood of your people! But YOU! YOU RUINED ME!" he cried, the eye having burned itself completely, and it's side of the face burned slowly away, leaving the bare bone behind.  
  
"Enough, corrupted unworthy! Now you shall face the blade of the final judgement!" cried Damathodor above the Vile Lord's agonized screams, the light had returned, further singing his face.  
  
"You shall not have the pleasure, cursed fool!" spat the creature, leaping suddenly into the flames of the surrounding ring of torches. He took up a torch and, feeling the heavens draining his life force, leapt uno the burning stake with all his might, driving the flaming steel pitch through his naked chest, and crying out sharply for the last time as his body immolated rapidly and caught fire from the inside.  
  
A heavy peice of metal clinked loudly to the floor as the spasmatic creature's skeleton tore free f it's skin and flesh and fell backwards, glowing blueish white and flying upwards. The dark soul swam towards the ceiling, crying out in elation and release; It turned suddenly and wheeled back towards the standing Paladin.  
  
"Many thanks, brave Knight. You have set my soul free from the corrupt and vIle shell that Diablo the Lord of Terror set me in long ago. Although my physical form is destroyed, and my life over, I am finally free. Long, long ago, thousands of years ago, I was the Prince of a mighty eastern empire. Forced by the devilish powers of Hell to yeild my form, Diablo was able to imprision me and set the cast of demomnic evil over my form. For countless lives of men I lurked in the dark halls of the fallen cathedrals and catacombs of the Terror Lord, and finally he brought me here, from the outer most layers of hell." The spirit spoke, it's heavenly amplifyed voice booming and echoing off the walls. "I once stood against this dark power, but I was weak, and captured. I warn thee; do not fall before the dark one! Aim for the soulstone implanted in his chest, and dare you not glance into the horrible eyes! The fires of hell itself emit from those wretched eyes! Sen him back to Hell, and there he shall remain!"  
  
Damathodor watched as the spirit took the hand of the hovering Gabriel and began it's journey back to the pearly gates of heaven.  
  
"Go, brave knight; fly to your fateful encounter! I cannot say what will come to pass in the darknes below; but the fate of humanity rests upon your courage and stregnth!" the angel said, and flew off into the dimming overhead. Damathodor spun and, finding the doorway leading downwards, ran swiftly for it in the growing dark.  
  
"Hold, brave preist; Damathodor headed through here moments ago. . .no doubt that shadow he pursued was none other than the Sorceress' second hand monster. . ." said the Necromancer to Bometh the sweating preist-archer.  
  
"But Durag; the Knight will need our help! We cannot leave him to a dark and dreadful fate!" replied the preist. He was eager to follow his companion through the dark gates and into the cathedral. Durag did not know where this recent surge of courage had come from in this feeble-seeminging altar preist. . .  
  
"Holy man, if we are to follow the Knight, then let us go; but I sense that more evil than the Sorceress is in the balance here; perhaps the Terror Lord himself is preparing to make his escape from Hell. . ."  
  
"Surely the Sorceress is behind it all!" cried the Preist, gritting his teeth in fury and twisting his hands around his bow shaft. "If Damathodor tries to go agaisnt the Sorceress after the Terror Lord has been freed, then he will perish!"  
  
"We must stop the Sorceress from releasing the Prime Evil at all costs, Bometh; as I fought with the Sorceress' mage creature, I felt her prescence in the top-most tower; there I shall go, and finish the evil summoner once and for all!" said Durag. Bometh nodded his weary head.  
  
"Yes, and no doubt the heavens shall assist Damathodor in dispatching all the enemies that would oppose him in his quest, whatever it may be; I sense that our companion is hading into a great evil. . ." replied the preist.  
  
So off the pair ran, running quickly under the gateway and making thier way speedily up to the gates of the cathedral. The tip of the final spire piercing the black clouds overhead, the light drizzle falling increased in magnitude with every step, and by the time the duo had entered the smashed doors of the Cathedral from the Inner courtyard, the storm had set in in earnest, lightening cracking the silence of the desolate battlefeild below the city where hundreds of demons and men alike lay in the agonized stances of death. . .  
  
"So," whispered the Sorceress in her lair at the top of the cathedral, "The Necromaner and the preist plan to assault me in force. . .Fools! Little do they know my plan is irreversible as soon as the Foolhardy Paladin enters the gateway to hell!" she turned away from the window as the Sorcerer and the Preist ducked into the cathedral from the courtyard below. The lightening struck up in the stratossphere, lighting the dank room suddenly and revealing the tortured carcass of the Bishop that had once ruled benevolently over this great city; his face twisted in pain as he hung from the ceiling. The cruel Sorceress shoved the body forcefully and it spun about on it's tether. "Soon, master, soon the pawn shall enter your gate, and, capturing his powerful body, you shall control throuh his weak mind the power to transverse the gateway of hell and step forth into the material world!" she cried into the dark. "Then we shall rule; I your right hand and master of the human races, and you, my lord and scource, to oversee the realms of earth and hell, and lay seige to the gates of heaven from our post!"  
  
Lightening struck wildy in the freak, magic powered storm, but Damathodor heard it not, so far down was he, taking the stairs in heavy, quick strides he ran into the catacombs. No demons dared stand in his way, but the darkness was almost absolute; the key to the unholy gate jingled brightly around his neck, and lit the dank, wet passage a few feet in front of him.  
  
Suddenly, looming ahead of him in the dark, a gigantic bulk erupted from the shadows; a grotesque and stinking demonic figure lifted two hairy, greasy arms and brought them down, smashing the rock in front of the halted knight. Two more arms flew from the darkness and grabbed for the holy warrior, but he leapt back and saved himself. The four armed beast stepped challengingly forward in the gloom, it's wretched and thick skinned form blocking the passage, it took a defensive, bold stance and arched it's top set of arms.  
  
It stood a good fve feet taller than the knight, and it's muscules, covered in sweat and disgusting grime rippled angrily in the dark. It grunted, and snorted as snot dripped from it's eerily human face. Tusk like fangs jutted from the lower lips and the small, sloping forehead dotted with a single yellowish eye gave it a hideous, prehistoric look. It was obviously not very bright, and stood there stupidly in the false night, waiting to attack this glowing and prepared knight. It's only covering, a ripped and torn loincloth, rippled between it's spread legs as it took another step forward. Damathodor tried not to vomit as the stench hit his face and the creature's warm, roting breath assailed his nostrils. He lifted his sword and cried in reply the the grunting;  
  
"O thou unholy thing! Wretched stinking mess! Step ye back from my blade, or run it upon you I shall!" he cried bravely, the heavens lighting the sword of Athos brilliantly. The thing was taken aback by this holy light, but the glow disclosed a greater secret; behind this creature waited an entire company of these behemouth giants, eyes glowing hot and yellow. Damathodor swung at the hesitating arm of the first thing, slicing through the leathery skin, the blade burned the hellish flesh and caused a mighty scream to echo through the catacombs. The creature swung back, knocking Damathodor backwards and into a far wall, dazed.  
  
The creature was charging now, it's companons behind it, it's arm bleeding horribly in the gloom, it leapt great steps toward the thing who had wounded it so. The Paladin ducked low, and, rolling under it, flashed up his sword, cutting easily through the fleshy underbelly of the thing, spilling it's nasty green blood and littering the floor with it's insides. It toppled forward and smashed lifeless into the wall, it's fnal moan echoing mournfully through the cavernous passages.  
  
Damathodor did'nt wait for the rest of the horde to recover from the shock of their companion's cruel demise, and he leapt viciously upon the chest of the next beast and, kncking it's bulk backwards, cut through the greasy skin of its naked neck. He leapt backwards from the gasping creature now, and began to recite his hly alms, as the beast before him grasped it's neck with one arm, trying to hold back the squirting blood from it's torn artery, and then wavered in dizziness as the whole side wall splattered with green death and it too fell backwards, revealing the next beast in the narrow passage. Damathodor, praying softly, prepared for the long battle ahead. . .  
  
Durag had halted on the stairs leading up towards the Sorceress' lair, and, listening intently with his mouth open to better hear, looked back at a confused Bometh.  
  
"Bometh, listen, hear you not the clatter of footsteps from above? They are coming. . ." he said. Bometh frowned, concerned now at ths strange behavior.  
  
"Who? The Sorceress? Who comes, Durag?" he asked the concentrating magician.  
  
"Prepare yor staff, preist, for your bow will not hold well on these narrow stairs; nor will it have much chance of affecting this coming enemy." The Necromancer said, hefting his enchanted mace from his side; he hd recovered it from the battlefeild after the gohst had done it's job. He felt the enchanted stregnth fill his arms as he easily lifted the heavy weapon and the armor about him thickened as he sought assistance silently from the great dragon lord. . .Bometh brought out his thick walking staff carefully, it was made of oak and bolted with thick lather for the handle, and he had had a blacksmith in town fix a small but sharp blade to it's upper end before the departure for battle.  
  
"When they come," whispered the Sorcerer, "Do not be afraid; they are undead skeletons, by the sound of thier footsteps, and I shall try to steal away their wills from the Soceress as they assail us; for your part, stand beside me now and aim for the spines as they come; in the skulls lie the magical force that compels them, so by severing the spine you cut the flow of magic to the body. . ." Bometh nodded in the darkness, a window high above them showered bright flashes of lightening onto the pair as the waited silently in the narrow stairwell. They had barely enough room to stand side by side. "Here they come, I sense them close!"  
  
From around the corner of the slight passage came charging a whole host of thin bone warriors, their white and gleaming visages grinning involuntarily in the shadows. The staff swung swiftly, arching under the thick rbs of the first skeleton and cutting neatly the senstive spinal chord; the lead thing toppled immeadiatly. The mace swung fluidly across the narrow way, smashing the skulls of two reanimated bone warriors and sending the gleaming bones skittering down the stairs. With each blow the Necromacer felt power surge into his arm through the mace, and the speed of his swings increased rapidly from each kill, Bometh wondered at this magic, and could not help but stare as the mace blurred and destroyed the evil things with such speed and ferocity that the scene was almost too fast to watch. He, too, swung as quickly as he could, but only managed a few kills before the hallway was clear.  
  
"The enchanted mace," explained Durag, "grants to it's master increased speed and ferocity with each blow. It was called the Steel Mace of Massacre by the man whom I aquired it from."  
  
Bometh stared at the instrument. "He must have been very sad to see it go!" he whispered.  
  
Durag smiled, "You could say that," he said evily, "He was'nt going to need it where e was headed to. . ." Bometh looked up at that smiling mouth from under the skull helmet's rim.  
  
"And where," asked the preist slowly, "was he going to?"  
  
"Why, to hell, my dear preist! That vile Barbarian had pillaged and desecrated entire villages before the locals hired me to put a stop to it!" Durag replied. "Oh, those early days of my mercenary work. . ." he sighed happily. "Would you like to see him? The Barbarian?" he asked suddenly, turning to the horrified preist.  
  
"You can do that? He's dead!" he asked, knowing how stupid that sounded just after he said it.  
  
"Of course I can! In fact, his spirit may be of some use to us in the battle coming down at us. . ." said the Necromancer, closing hs eyes.  
  
"What are you saying?" Bometh asked, again confused, "What battle?" but Durag silenced him with a gloved hand.  
  
"Listen. . ." he said softly, and sure enough, the distant sound of bony footprints echoed down from the stairway above. . . "Prepare yourself; there are more this time. . ." 


	12. Of Dungeons and Stairways

Hurling his weary body yet again into the fray, Damathodor sliced valiantly into the yeilding flesh of his enemies, the army of brutes felt the bitter touch of steel as the Knight drove relentlessly into their ranks, cutting and hacking them with all his stregnth. One flailing demon bent low with his small head and erupted a tremendous blow upon the Paladin's raised arm, sending the man rolling backwards over the stone. Leaping to his feet, the Knight summoned all the power he could muster and, setting his feet, charged with such a cry and force, the blow drove his holy blade clear through the clueless monster, tearing through the thick body and sending the corpse backwards, the Knight's amazing charge bucking back the line of creatures behind the corpse and toppling the mass to the floor.  
  
Taking advantage of this small space of time to quickly sip from a topped grail from his pocket, the knight began to chant a new kind of prayer with the force flowing bavk into his body from the warm, syrup-like liquid. He beseeched earnestly the powerful heavens and prayed for the force of the elements to assist him in his endevours, and, the brilliant sword of Athos, glowing still, took on a blueish hue. . .  
  
Charging with a bellow of raw fury, the foremost beast met the blade head on, and, running upon it, the hideous thing felt the icy coldness of the steel spread rapidly through his warm inards, freezing the precious organs and fluid as the magic travelled through his veins. The demonic monstrosity froze in place, it's gnarled face twisted in agony and fear, and fell slowly backwards with a groan as the ice reached it's evil heart and extinguished the life from it's body. The horde, confused at this new magic, babbled fearfully as their companion's corpse let out a final gasp of steam and lay still. The Knight gave them no room to think, charging yet again and blasting through the crowded mess of creatures, acking off limbs and stabbing cold, icy death into their terrified bodies; the elemental magic had been sent from heaven; freezing all evil that stood in the knight's way.  
  
Driving these monsters, Damathodor glimpsed a far stairway in the room at the end of the narrow hall. Standing before this doorway was one of the most hideous, muscular, hateful looking creatures the Knight had ever seen. It stood tall and terrible, it's black skin bubbling with poison blotches and it's green wretched eyes glaring malignantly from under a horned helmet. A thick cape covered the main part of it's body, heavy, flaming hands holding a red, flaming sword in either hand, the being of Hell stepped boomingly into the fray, ripping the behemouths who stood in his way, soon he had cleared a path to the knight, and, laughing evily, he threw back his night black cape to reveal his flaming, poisonous form.  
  
"What evil is this!?!" cried the Paladin in shock.  
  
"Face thy fate with grace, knight, for to confront my master you must first vanquish his devotee!" bellowed the hell-born balrog, lashing forward with it's two sabres, cutting the air hotly above the knight's ducked head.  
  
"Stand you back, vile beast, for I shall slay all that would prevent my holy quest!" exclaimed the Knight, holding his blade bravely up to the flaming blackness. The faith of the brave knight shook the wills of the evil spirit, and, backing up a step, the balrog growled and gnashed it's sharp fangs as the Knight was covered, bathed, head to toe in a heavenly light and sheilded thusly. "Your fires shall do no harm to me!"  
  
"Then my steel shall taste your flesh, righteous one!" and with that the demon lord slashed forward, scissoring the twin blades over the knight, who, by heaven sent speed, intersected them with his own blade, and, the horrible flaming weapons, contacting the holy weapons thusly, exploded into smitherens before the face of the terrified demon king.  
  
Summoning all his stregnth and ferver into a mastered prayer, the Knight, without further ado, let loose the glowing force of his might and outwards rained a shower of cleansing lightening, a fist of the heavens smiting the evil form and ending the power that held it's place on earth. The knight watched, fully regenerated, as the wretched form screamed in the erupting storm of light, and, falling to it's knees, held it's sides to try to halt the explosions that now racked it's pitiful body. Raising his just blade, the Paladin let it fall hard over the demon king's shoulders, seperating the hideous head from the monstrous body. The body exploded in a blast of light as the head rolled away, hit the wall, and then evaporated as well.  
  
Damathodor stepped heavily over the creature, and, seeing the doorway to the stairs before him, walked resolutely towards them. Heat blasted upwards to meet his descent into the caverous opening. . .  
  
Durag, concentrating hard in the flickering light of the storm high above the gate to hell, felt the spirit f the barbarian rising within him slowly; he chanted in a whisper to assist the gohst on it's ascention;  
  
"Kalar, shalumar, buruhma, KANDASKALAR!" he bellowed in the flashing stairway, Bometh crossing himself at his side, whispered the blasphemy of the act he saw being comitted by his companion. . .  
  
"AAAAAAaaaarrrrrgggg!" erupted a furious cry from the darkness above the pair. Loking up, the preist saw the hovering, glowing form of the Barbarian the Necromancer had summoned. The being growled maliciously as he saw the two below him.  
  
"Hello, Dragon Bane." Said the Necromancer, smiling up at the spirit in it's gigantic muscular form.  
  
"Gar ma' Kushka!" spat the spirit in it's language. For some reason, Bometh was glad he did'nt understand, but then the interpretation came, "Burn in hell, Sorcerer!"  
  
"No, my freind, that is what YOU are doing these days." Laughed Durag happily, "It's good to see they are treating you nicely, you hideous peice of cow dung. . ."  
  
"Choke on it, you bastard! How dare you summon my soul for your twisted means!" the spirit bellowed.  
  
"Now now, Dragon Bane, be a good boy. . ." said the Necromancer, and, with a flick of his hand, the spirit went stiff and bucked violently in the air. "There you are. . .you're going to help us out, here, my freind. . ."  
  
"Son. . .of. . .a . . .Bitch!" gasped the spirit through the force of the binding spell. "I'll k-k-kill you both you m-m-mother f. . ." he choked, but Durag threw him forward violently, up the stairs and in the lead, the pair ascended the stairwell after him.  
  
"Now, FIGHT!" commanded the dark Magician. The spirit, hovering thickly in front of the pair, mindlessly began to tear apart the skinny skeletal forms in front of the two. Screaming vile curses and swears on the Necromancer's life, the ghost ripped mercilessly through the crowd of enemies.  
  
"Bastards! GET OUT OF MY GOD DAMNED WAY! GET OUT!" the barbarian bellowed viciously. "HEY NECROMANCER! JUMP IN; THIS IS F----- FUN!!!" he laughed next, happy in spite of his anger, to be killing things again.  
  
"He'll fight with all his power until the bind runs out," the Necromancer told Bometh, "I gave him about five minutes of 'life' to live, he's got a minute left, by now. . ."  
  
"WHAT!?!" cried the spirit in rage, he had overheard the bad news. Despite his anger and dread at being sent back to hell, he was helpless to stop fighting.  
  
Sure enough, after a little more than a minute passed, the spirit halted it's ferocious charge and, screaming painfully and murderously that he'd be back to take the Sorcerer's head, exploded in blinding light up the stairs into oblivion.  
  
"Stand to and prepare yourself, Bometh; there are yet more troubles on the way!"  
  
High up in her lair, the evil Sorceress paced angrily back and forth.  
  
"I feel my power weakening. . .the soldiers I sent. . .idiots! They have failed me. . ." she saw the forms of the skeletal creatures falling back on the stairs near her chamber. "It is time to evoke the force of omething more powerful . . ." she told herself with a smile, stridng quickly over to her desk, she flipped open a thick, worn book on the top of the pile. Scrolling through the dusty pages, she came upon the passage she was searching for. She began to read quickly, smiling as she went along. . .  
  
"Halt, brave preist!" cried the Necromancer, "I sense great evil ahead. . .something hellish is at foot, and I fear that the Sorceress has unleashed some great and terrible force upon us!" he asserted. 


	13. A Leap into Hell

Sorry for the wait, people, but the site was weird for me for a while. Maybe they announced something I did'nt see, or maybe it was just my computer, but it was out for a while or so, so, here is the newest edition, and once again, to the E-mailers concerned about the future editions, sorry and please enjoy. . .  
  
Damathodor stalked slowly, cautiously, ever downward along the pitch black stairwell. His sword out in front of him, sweat began to pour unchecked down his forehead ad he had to constantly wipe it from his eyes through stinging pain. It was searing hot. The very air the Knight breathed was tainted it seemed, with pure hellish heat and dry fire. The Knight choked more than once as the unatural ounslaught of heat increased gradually with each step.  
  
Finally, after an hour of smply walking downward into the unbearable, firey air, Damathodor came suddenly upon a gigantic crack in the narrow stairway. Looking hesitantly into the even darker casm before him, the knight glanced confusedly down the continuing stairway. Feeling the hotter air emitting from the large cavern in front of him; the knight quickly deduced that, seeing as his destinaton was hell, he should follow the hottest route to the underworld. He stepped heavily over the scattered bricks and into the dense, thick, horrible heat.  
  
Little did he know, Damathodor was right about the correct route, and he was heading directly for the unimaginable Horror that lurked thousands of miles beneath his feet. . .  
  
Hours later, after many leaps and bounds over unending pits earth casms filled to the capacity with liquid magma. Only through constant and feverent prayer could the unbeatable Paladin fight off the heat and murderous fires. He reached a mighty pit falling off into incalculable blackness. He looked about, the heat setting in during his lapse in concentration. He lingered by the edge of this vast and unending casm and felt the gentle searing fires blasting up into his reddened face.  
  
"What is this?" He asked himself, his question sounding off the high walls above. There were no edges around the entrance into the 'room' in which the Knight stood. He heard a clicking-scratching sound echooing above him, almost in reply to his question. He had just turned to go back the way he had come when the demon creature flipped lightly from it's perch on the ceiling ten feet above his head and landed on his chest heavily.  
  
"Aaarg!" Damathodor cried in suprise and fury, swiping with his sword, but the furry little bat-thing had it's claws wrapped deep in the fabric of the Knight's protruding undercloak. Losing his balance, he waved his limbs rapidly in the thick, hot air, feeling his foot slip quickly from the smooth rock beneath him. Gasping once in the heavy atmosphere, he tumbled silently backwards into the gaping pit he had just circumvented. The demonic creature's twisted gleaming eyes were the last beacons of light the falling and twisting Paladin saw before complete darkness covered his vision, and he fell.  
  
Meanwhile, the Necromancer and the anxious preist climbed ever higher along the stairwell, the Sorcerer's growing sense of impending doom multiplying with every step. The only sound, eerily enough was the echooing scrape and clank of the two men's boots on the cold stone stairs. Despite the cold and rain outside, Bometh was sweating profusely in his exertions, and puffed along some distance behind the nimble Necromancer, who stopped every ten steps to urge him on, impatient to met the new threat he felt before it could amply prepare itself.  
  
"Come, noble preist, get moving! The Barbarian can help us not in this growing doom over our heads!" He whispered harshly at one point, turning in the dim way to watch the unfit man waddle his way comically up the stairs. He would have laughed if he had not resolved to show no emotion unless in the prescence of Marie. His face was set and grim, but even he was beggining to feel the weight of his excersice.  
  
"I don't do much running along the aisles of the prayer room in the church!" sputtered the preist, his face red and his hands bracing his knees as he came up to Durag.  
  
"Yet run we must, for an evil above all that I have known lies in wait above!" came the reply, and on they ran. Soon they came to an evening of the pass; a short wood door barred the path, and, peeking from beyond it seeped some evidence of a large, well-lit room.  
  
"Be careful, my preist, the enemy we pursue may well be found beyond this very door!" said Durag, putting his hand upon the rotten wood. Seeing Bometh braced, he flung his weight upon it and the barrier caved easily, the two tumbled inside, weapons at the ready.  
  
Indeed a large, torch-lit room lay before them, but it was barren of all objects of furniture and holsterings, only five torches bolted to the walls of either side and a large burning central pyre in the center of the rectangular space. Upon their entrance, the emense central blaze flared up, forcing dancing torchlight into the up-most corners of the tall chamber.  
  
"Magic!" whispered Bometh, crossing himself and looking for some foe to spring upon them at any moment. The Necromancer gazed about skeptically, then, his eyes catching upon some hidden object in the mass of burning wood and oils in the center fire, he started, bringing out his hand to shade his searching glare. His cursory investigation confirmed his suspicion.  
  
"Take care near it's lowest limbs, for they hold the most poison, although all of them carry some degree, the uppermost will not kill you with any luck," he began to instruct the preist, who stared at his companion in terror and anxiety. "It's flames will not harm you unless you touch the skin itself, and try not to look into the eyes; they are hypnotic, I am told, and the thing uses them to instill stupidity into it's victims before it strikes."  
  
"What are you talking about!?!" shouted Bometh in bewilderment, but the Necromancer spoke on, the flames growing still.  
  
"The weak spot is under the center eye, in the things stomach, above it's waist. Stab, pound or gouge the area as best you can, I shall try my hand at counterpoisoning the beast, but you must assist me in fending it off, whatever you do, do NOT let it get to the wall, or we will surely perish." Durag concluded, seconds before an enormous flaming claw erupted by magic from the midst of the pit of fire at the center of the room. A hideous head of some sort pulled itself snarling from the blazing mass of burning.  
  
"Dear lord!" cried Bometh as Durag started forward, pacing with his weapon up. He turned quickly as he prepared for the battle.  
  
"Don't do that praying stuff, either. It just pisses them off."  
  
The creature, a massive human form, enveloped by fire and waving four clawed arms, each dripping deadly poison, roared defiantly as Durag's blade gleamed in challenge to it's grotesque visage. Crossing himself again, Bometh carefully started forward, possibly to his death, as Durag cried some vile sounding ancient curse and threw himself headlong at the gigantic spider-human. 


	14. Guardian of the Gates of Hell

I'm back, finally, and I've got a few more chapters before the end of this story; I promise I've got some more twists and turns in store for the final parts! Where does the pit lead? What can possibly defeat a spider demon king?  
  
Damathodor the knight fell for ages, blindly in the burning darkness. Forcing himself to turn in mid-fall, he twisted, terrified in the pitch- black emptiness, searching for up or down in vain as he continued to fall. Heavy breezes swept upwards into his face, cooling him and drying the sweat into crust on his wearied visage. Despite the breeze, Damathodor felt the heat rising all around him. Thinking quickly, the knight ripped hard towards the direction he felt the most heat. Straightening out, he felt the air rushing upwards and realized he had straightened out.  
  
Spreading his limbs and leaning slightly forward, he slowed his descent. Bracing for a sudden impact his mind searched frantically for what to do next. He could think of nothing but hope for the best. Just as he felt a slight halt in the updraft, his feet contacted hard with stone, and he felt his legs brace and quickly crumple beneath him with a jolt of crushing pain. He rolled forward and the impact shifted from his legs to his shoulders and down his back as his armor clanged metallically into the blackness. He slid and rolled for some time in the darkness and he finally felt his head smash brutally into a rock wall somewhere to the left of his landing spot. He lost consciousness and drifted further into darkness.  
  
The demon creature miles above faced Durags charge on braced claws, shifting nimbly to one side and swiping a dripping poisoned claw over the Necromancers head. Bometh brought his staff wildly down to crack over the creatures bent neck, but the mighty oaken weapon shattered on the blackened demon hide and left the startled priest face to face with an angry demon and a broken stick.  
  
"AAAAARRRGGG!" screamed something behind the creature, and a blue blazing sword-point burst through the wretched monsters abdomen, sending greenish blood spattering over the dumbstruck priest. Durag ripped the kris from the rough hide and brought it slicing down through the tough skin along the creatures spine. He felt rigid bone resist his blade, and the spider-human bucked backwards and swatted the backs of his lower claws against the sorcerer, sending him flying into the far wall with a thud and a crack as his bone armor shattered.  
  
Bleeding profusely from its midsection, the wounded beast turned fully back to its first adversary, the weaker one. . .Bometh had not been dazed long, as Durag shook his head free of pain on the wall, Bometh had leapt towards the opposite wall, on which hung some ancient weapons for decoration. Lifting a heavy carved bow from the display rack, he sent an arrow from his reserves whistling into the advancing demons face. Recoiling with an inhuman scream of pain and horror, the putrid monstrosity swung its poisoned limbs frantically as it reeled backwards, covering its face with its higher claws. Bometh knocked a new arrow, and, taking aim, sent the shaft with a sickening thud into the dry skin folds directly below the monsters third eye.  
  
"The lowest eye! The lowest eye! The heart lies behind the lowest eye!" bellowed the Necromancer behind the flaming, furious beast. Too late, Bometh readied his next, killing arrow, but one of the flailing arms sunk its deadly end violently into the priests side. The monster took two great steps forward and opened its gaping mouth, preparing to rend and rip the helpless priest to pieces. "A GIGHAD! ELBERE A GIGHAD!" screamed a deep, magic voice, and a splintering, gleaming explosion of white sealed the demon from his prey. Bometh safe behind a wall of bone, the demon whirled angrily on the taunting figure behind him. Durag ripped the useless armor from his body, and, spitting blood onto the stone floor, sneered at the hell spawn.  
  
"You've hurt my friend." He panted, his eyes blazing green in inhuman fury, "Now I shall hurt you. . ." The demon, despite its rage, shuddered as the darkness surrounded it and cut off its vision from the rest of the room. The entire passage seemed to grow cold and lifeless as the creature challenged its nemesis, stepping forward into the gloomy light. "So be it. . ." whispered Durag, and he summoned his darkest spell.  
  
Slowly the Knight in the darkness lifted the lids of his throbbing, bloodshot eyes. He moaned, and, twitching his arm in the hazy blackness, searched feebly for his sword. A scratching, like claws on stone, echoed nearby and a demon grunted into the chasm. Damathodor's eyes flickered open and focused, squinting through the uniform nothingness. He saw a gleam a foot away, the hilt of his sword.  
  
The scratching was coming closer, and the creature in the blackness was sniffing now, searching for the source of the scent of human blood. . . Damathodor felt a cold metal bit in his hand, and he closed his eyes as his fingers found the groove of the hilt of his old blade. The demon stopped its snuffling and twitched its head, hearing a soft clicking and scraping sound in front of it. Looking with fascination, it saw a dark form, gleaming slightly rise from in front of it. Its shocked expression remained on its face even after the blade of Athos had torn its head from its body.  
  
Creeping silently along an invisible wall in the total darkness, Damathodor suddenly noticed ahead a faint glimmer of reddish light flickering off a far wall. Some minutes later, he came upon a downward slope and the glow became stronger, no longer flickering but distinct and steady. He presently heard several different voices garbling some unknown dialect ahead, in the source of the light. Not being able to make out what was being discussed, the Knight, keeping his sword up in the growing red haze, wiped the dripping sweat from his forehead and kept on. Minutes passed and he finally reached to source of the light; a pair of torches, blazing silently at the end of the sloping corridor. A great steel door stood, blocking the Knights way, and, glowing red as it was, the Knight hesitated to touch it, even with a mailed hand. Peering close, he made out several distinct words in some long lost and hell-born language:  
  
Tiramor Drag-Halbe Nithalaka Bi Teotanhitan  
Timos DEL GEREBETH FORTENITH  
  
The door read. Damathodor squinted and wished silently the Necromancer were with him, he would be able to read it, no doubt. Sighing in confusion, the mighty Knight shrugged his armored shoulders and lifted his sword to drive a wedge between the two doors and pry them open. Suddenly the doors swung open with a loud swoosh and the Knight, not caught off guard, brought around his shield from his back and leapt back with his sword leading into the room beyond. He promptly eased his guard.  
  
In the opened room a gentle, relaxing trickle sounded as several small streams of water seeped through the walls and into a circular moat running around the edges of the room. Veils of pearly gems hung singly and in groups from a well shaped and carved ceiling and several torch posts, alive and flickering, jutted from the walls. The lovely smell of incense from a million spices assailed the Knights nostrils, and, perhaps most shockingly, a tall beautiful woman stood waiting for him in the center of the chamber. Damathodor lowered his shield warily, and took a step into the room. The woman looked up, her soft black eyes following his movements closely and her lips smiling ever so slightly.  
  
"Welcome, worthy Knight." She said to him, her words full of gentle and melodious tones. Her hands moved to indicate the room about her. "Welcome to the Holy Springs of the Earth." She sung. Damathodor stepped now fully into the room and looked about him, then at the woman. She stood tall, almost six feet tall, but not quite as tall as he, and wore very little on her soft, tanned skin. A circlet of gleaming metal rounded the base of her neck and from its front ran a small chain holding up her scant breastplates. Her stomach, delicate and sloping, lay open for the Knight until just before her thighs where another chain draped a still cloth covering halfway down her slender legs. She wore no shoes, but had circlets of gold about her ankles and wrists. Feeling dumbstruck but not wanting to be rude or invasive of her stunning form, the Knight jerked his lingering eyes to the woman's face. Her hair was Black, like her eyes, and fell about shoulder length, kept back behind her ears by a small band of gold.  
  
"I," Began Damathodor, not knowing how to speak to this mystical being. "I am the Knight Damathodor, of the Holy Lands, chosen to undertake the quest. . ." He began, but trailed off as the woman stepped towards him with a quizzical look on her face and began running her fingers along the inscriptions on his shield.  
  
"What strange clothing is this?" She asked of him, her eyes holding his in their inquisitive gaze. "So cold and hard; and weapons? What need do you have of weapons? This is a soft place, Knight." She told him softly. Damathodor could smell the fragrance of her breath and the closeness of her form. He was becoming distracted, he realized, but he almost didn't care. "Softness, sir Knight. . ." She whispered drawing close to him. He shut is eyes as he kissed her lips, and his blood heat, his hands reached to hold her to him, and she grasped him tightly.  
  
NO! screamed a voice, somewhere inside of his dazzled brain. He suddenly noticed the coolness of the air around him, and the utter beauty of the place, fringed as it was with haze. He pulled away with some effort and the woman looked at him, fear and wariness in her eyes. He looked closely at her and away again.  
  
"What is it?" She asked him quietly, menacingly, almost.  
  
"Something is not right in this place." He breathed, feeling the heat rise and the lights fade into a slight reddish tint. The trickling of the fountains slowed and the scent of incense gave way to something else. . . "You are not right. . ." he said, looking again at her. She stepped quickly away and spat at his feet.  
  
"You dare insult my hospitality in this place of beauty!" She screamed, her voice now shrill and malignant. She seemed to grow in height and her features changed. Her eyes glowed red, from her fingers gleamed nails, then claws, and her back arched convulsively as two dark, leathery wings grew from her now pale and deathly skin.  
  
"There is naught but death here!" Cried Damathodor, bringing up his sword and shield, gritting his teeth in the growing hellish light. The torch posts were made of bone, and the streams emitted red blood from the mouths of white skulls into a moat of blood and fire along the floor. The stench of death pervaded the place, and as the demoness evil lips parted to show two gleaming fangs, the Knight realized fully his danger. Stepping back slightly, the door clanged shut behind him, and a voice, high and evil called out to him;  
  
"Stand, oh Knight of the Holy Land! Stand and face your death! None shall pass the keeper of the Gates of Hell!!!" 


	15. Portals and Stairs

Welcome back to the Diabolico Zone, Ladies and Gentlemen; he's back! Boy it feels good to be writing once again, and I hope none of my old readers will forsake me for my stint of AWOL a little while ago. I am back to work and cranking out more and more tales of terror and delight, (I hope) but please, help me out here, I've only got a basic outline of what I want to do with the ending and the characters so fill me in on what you want to see!  
  
Durag saw the demon hiss and tremble as he concentrated on his spell. He is terrified of you. He thought to himself. Use that. And so he did. The monster, stepping tentatively towards the lone sorcerer, drew quick, halting breaths into it's gaping mouth, it's fangs dried of poison from it's labored breathing, it clicked it's claws, looking for a suitable opportunity to attack. Durag concentrated hard, and, pulling the shadows from his surroundings, drawing strength from the storm still raging outside, and delving deep into the recesses of the demon mind before him, he suddenly thrust his hand forcibly towards his adversary.  
  
Expecting some physical melee, the monstrosity recoiled instinctively, drawing it's deadly limbs about it's face and eyes to protect itself, but no blows came, and the creature quickly recovered. It peered venomously from behind its claws. The Necromancer was no longer there, only darkness encompassed the spider creature's vision. It blinked it's eyes as a dreadful image suddenly exploded into it's sight; the dark lord himself, the creator was before him! Cursing him! Charging him! A sea of fire and torment awaited the helpless demon, whose many legs had suddenly decided to stop responding to it's mind's pleas to run, run as fast as they could!  
  
Durag watched as the monster screamed in horror and thrashed blindly at it's eyes. The pitiful beast was hallucinating. The Necromancer had harnessed the spider demon's worst fear and turned it loose upon him. Watching the monster tear it's eyes to pieces made the Sorcerer shudder. What could he be thinking about? Then he realized he didn't care. Walking silently up to the now whimpering and writhing monster, the Necromancer drove his sword unceremoniously into its lowest eye. One final shudder of pain and shock racked the beast's body, and it laid still, its giant corpse staining the stone floor green.  
  
Racing towards the bone wall, now, Durag swept his hand and the gleaming fortress fell to pieces and evaporated. Bometh lay unresponsive on the floor, his shattered staff still gripped in his fist.  
  
"Priest!" Cried the Necromancer, "Priest do not die!" he called, laying his hands on the poisoned man's forehead. He was still alive, so far as Durag could tell, but barley. Thinking quickly, he reached into one of his belt packs and pulled from it a lone jar full of black fluid. He always kept one bottle of antidote for himself, in case he ever accidentally poisoned himself; now he slipped the dark contents into Bometh's parched mouth. "Drink, damn you!"  
  
The Priest coughed and gagged on the syrupy fluid and rolled his eyes up at the ceiling far above. Durag rolled him onto his side. Bometh vomited. Still unconscious, he fluttered his eyes and his pale skin flushed. The antidote had worked! Durag dragged the heavy man over to the near door and locked it tight, propping the priest against the wall next to the heavy door.  
  
"Stay put, priest." He said to the immobile form. Then he walked over to the Spider corpse. "We've got some unfinished business, me and you." He whispered, and, casting his hand over the lifeless form, began to mutter a string of chants and ancient incantations. The spider's claw moved. Then it's whole arm twitched, and, the greenish skin, now black as night, glowed blue as the corpse slowly stood upon it's legs once more, it's eyes, glowing bright blue and lifeless, stared at the Necromancer in the gloomy room.  
  
"Khan-Dar, Heluile." the Sorcerer said. "Take me to the sorceress." The monster, in two strides, reached the opposite doorway and tore it open for it's new master. Steps led upwards, and the ghastly pair ran up them.  
  
Meanwhile, miles below the cathedral in the bowels of the earth, Damathodor faced off with the Guardian of the Gates of Hell. The foul vampire hovered menacingly before the gate at the end of the chamber, and fire leapt from the pool of blood surrounding the room.  
  
"Look, Knight, look upon your comrades in arms! All fallen! All drained by my lips!" she screamed in glee. Arms, drenched in blood and lifeless, reached up fro the blood, and faces too arose, moaning piteously for help, for a savior. Damathodor shuddered as he saw one Knight's soul, torn from head to toe, pull itself almost out of the pool of misery and reach weakly for the Demoness' feet. She waved her clawed fingers and the apparation was sent squealing back into the blood whence it had crawled. "They all challenged my power, and they all paid the price!"  
  
"Vile demon! Fly now from me, before I add you to the myriad of evil souls I have cleansed with this, the blade of Athos!" Damathodor shouted above her laughter, bringing his shield to bear and his sword into his defense stance.  
  
"You shall not be allowed to face my master in Hell, pity mortal!" came the reply. Damathodor, set for the attack, lunged at this last resolution from his nemesis and brought his blade slicing through the thick air. The demoness was too quick for him, in an instant she had vanished and reappeared behind him, laughing. She thrust a talon at the Knight and sent a black shard flying at his form. Damathodor was nearly knocked backwards with the force of the impact, and he looked in surprise to find the shard jutting from his thick armor, just over his heart.  
  
"The maggot's skin is thick!" hissed the devilish fiend above him, "But our claws are sharp!" and with that she whirled down upon him, dropping, hands outstretched to rend and tear him to pieces. Damathodor leapt clear and brought his sword upwards in the act, feeling it contact flesh, he turned the blade and had enough time to see with satisfaction one clawed hand drop bleeding to the floor.  
  
The demon screeched impossibly loud in her agony, cursing the Knight furiously in a hell-borne tongue. In retaliation Damathodor had to cover himself with his shield for an onslaught of five razor sharp talons. THUNK! THUNK! THUNK! THUNK! THUNK! They all sunk deep into the mighty shield, but not through. Charging at full speed, the Paladin leapt in mid-run to tackle the creature and bring his sword into her head, but once again the monster vanished in a flash and appeared behind the Knight as he landed with a heavy thud.  
  
The Paladin realized grimly, as the creature blasted yet another set of shards at him, that he would need to put a halt to her transporting abilities if he wanted to defeat her. He concentrated hard on the coldest regions of Mount Arreat that he could think of, summoning all the natural fury and cold of the strongest blizzard. His breath blasted out in steam in the suddenly cold air. The laughter and taunting of the demoness slowed then stopped, she looked about her, confused.  
  
"aaaaaaAAAARRRRRUUUKK!!!" cried the Knight, thrusting his strong arms out and sending a wave of cold and ice blasting from his form into the room. Catching the creature off-guard, the ice wall enveloped and froze her solid, her surprised and terrified expression gazing blankly through the ice. Damathodor, rising to his knees, thanked the heavens for his salvation and summoned a mighty force from the powers above. "Thus ends your reign of terror on my order, so it was said, let it be done." He said to the frozen monster, and, bringing his fist down upon the ice figure, smashed it into millions of scattered pieces.  
  
The blood from the streams in the wall turned to water, pure and good, and the fires and pool of red blood dissolved and left the same. Damathodor walked up to the gate. The very gate to Hell itself, and touched it with his hand. No sooner had he done this than he felt himself dragged violently into a gaping red portal and into confusion and pandemonium . . .He was being transported to Hell itself, where the final battle awaited him . . . 


	16. Prelude to Finale

Oh boy oh boy, I just love this plot now! A Knight in Hell, a Necromancer versus a Sorceress in a no-holds-barred, thunderstorm, tower-top death- match? Could things get any better? Oh yeah, and somewhere in those burning plains of the underworld lies the reanimated manifestation of the Lord or Terror himself, ready to tear and rip the flesh of all mankind as soon as the Sorceress completes her reincarnation spell. Can Damathodor kill the Lord of Terror before he makes his leap into Earth? Can Durag stop the Sorceress before she unleashes the greatest destructive force the Universe can ever know?  
  
His legs pumping as he tried with all his might to keep up with his resurrected minion further up the stairs. After what seemed ages, the sorcerer finally saw the climb even out ahead. The monster, eyes blue and lifeless waited stoically as the puffing Durag surmounted the final stairs and, hands on his knees, peered behind to see the great door to the top chambers.  
  
"G-good, my pet, n-now your work is done. You may go." He breathed, and flicking his wrist sent the demon's released corpse tumbling down the stairwell. He took a deep breath and pushed on the great brass ring. The door instantly flew open and the Necromancer stumbled into a well lit, circular chamber. Spell books and parchment littered the room, and a rack of staves and wands cluttered one wall. About twenty short demons lingered before Durag, gritting their sharp teeth and growling in the light, and the Necromancer drew his sword and began to advance.  
  
Easily slaying the first of the diminutive monstrosities with a swift upwards stroke, he whirled on his heels and ripped a gashing hole in the next adversary. The creatures hissed and backed away, trying to reorganize on the edges of the room, pondering the deathly mage in front of them.  
  
"Korumar, Koruma!" breathed the Sorcerer, summoning the two corpses of the slain demons. The bones flew free from the grips of the still warm flesh and built two grand skeletal warriors. Concentrating hard, Durag endowed his creations with the powers of the ancient elements, the first warrior's bony hands blazed suddenly with red-hot fire. The second shuddered slightly as his own hands surged with the white hot lightening of the storm outside. "Now go, my children of darkness, have fun." He breathed, and, understanding, the twin warrior mages began furiously blasting the terrified demons.  
  
Watching, impressed with his creations, Durag smiled happily as the final demon, jittering uncontrolled with electric shock, caught a flaming fireball in the chest and doubled over into the wall in a final wail of pain. Moments later two more flame-fisted skeletons rose from the ranks of the dead and saluted their new master. "Yes, my dark army. Let us continue, the Sorceress awaits in the next room, and we grow impatient to meet her!" Durag said.  
  
"Nilmarhar, Gilgishar!" shrieked the closest mage skeleton, grinning wickedly with his empty eyes. "Yes to kill! For the Master!" and the others excitedly took up the cry, "For the Master! To Kill! To Kill!" They hopped up and down. Durag smiled at his pets and prepared one final spell before the final battle. Pulling a small steel dagger from his belt, he inserted a small, glimmering emerald into a socket on the blade hilt. Tossing the poison-endowed blade to the floor a few feet in front of him, Durag closed his eyes and concentrated hard on the small weapon.  
  
With a tremendous clashing sound, the blade melted and splattered to life, molding upwards from some unknown source and forming a huge, steel monster, jaw set, face impassive and human-like body bristling with poison-dripping spikes. An Iron golem, towering high above the four skeletal mages, thundered a hollow, metallic cry, reverberating heavily off the stone walls and shaking the stone in the strongest support. The Necromancer smiled and made for the door to the final chamber, ready to face the final battle.  
  
The Sorceress heard the bellow as well, high up in the next room, and whirled around to face the door. Summoning in her fright her most powerful lightening spell, she braced her feet and prepared to face the impudent Necromancer. She had to stall him for a few minutes before she could open the portal for her Lord, just a few minutes, she thought to herself. The heavy wooden doorknob twitched slightly. She had locked it. A muffled, taunting voice sounded from behind it.  
  
"Knock, knock." The Necromancer's singsong voice filtered through. The Sorceress narrowed her eyes. Come on! She thought impatiently, Open the door so I can FRY your puny soul! She thought to herself. Then a huge, gray metal fist smashed through the thick wood as if it were paper. After the gigantic, hulking golem stepped through, the rest of the party followed, last of all the Necromancer.  
  
"Ahem," Durag cleared his throat, "I said Knock, knock." The Sorceress let loose her spell of lightening upon the giant beast in front of her, and white-hot static blinded the room.  
  
Miles below, the red glaring portal sealed with a terrible sound over the form of the brave Knight Damathodor. Falling endlessly into the hellish light all around him, the Paladin whipped about his sword and readied to come to the opposite end fighting. He set to prayer and concentration.  
  
A single, cloaked figure awaited the Knight as he burst, screaming and swinging his sword furiously into the shadowy hallway. The figure smiled under its hood, it's pitch black face burst from under the cloth, blazing white flames of wings tearing through the thin material and revealing a fell angel, body completely black, but surrounded in cooling bluish white flames. A crown of silver topped the heavenly head, whose white gleaming eyes showed out distinctly on the dark face.  
  
"Who are you?" asked the Knight, standing at bay a few steps away and hiding behind his sword and shield. He looked with wonder and wariness at this new apparition. In response to the question a white flame erupted on the being's chest, tracing out a design of a gleaming blade imbued in a glowing helm. Several gleaming runes shone out under the symbol and the Knight glanced to his own worn chest plate. The same symbol appeared through the scratches and bruises of the battles so far won.  
  
"I am the angel Nekka." Thundered the angel's deep voice. "Angel guardian of the warrior and the same being whom you yourself honor with your armor." The great wings folded over the spirit's back and a Great War Hammer, red flaming inscriptions scrawled across it's surface, swung gently into view at Nekka's side.  
  
"Nekka, the angel of war." Breathed Damathodor. "You are the guardian most honored by my brotherhood, we are the Knights of the flaming helm! Chosen men of the warrior guardian!" The Knight bowed upon his knees and, removing his helmet, crossed his sweaty forehead.  
  
"Rise, oh chosen one, child of faith, and receive the blessing of your guardian." The angel commanded, and Damathodor, rising, felt the blood in his veins surge with strength anew and his arms and legs gain new power. He felt he could punch through the heavy stone temple in a single strike. His weariness left him, and a cool breeze weaved gently under his hot, sweat- soaked armor, cleansing his skin and refreshing his body. His hair, matted and wet, tingled and dried fresh, and his hands, under his mighty gauntlets, were soothed and made ready for battle anew. He breathed heavily as the blessing passed.  
  
"Damathodor, chosen of the Paladin of righteousness, this final blessing I grant you in your hour of need; a strength above that of any mortal human in your time. A great strength to smite your enemy and combat his hell-born power." Nekka said, raising his hand over the soldier of right and showering him with heavenly might. Damathodor knew he could topple the temple now. . .  
  
"Now, my child, my chosen warrior, follow the hall of discord to reach the threshold of evil and find the dark lord in his chamber. Diablo awaits his evil servant's call, destroy him and rid the earth of his pestilential evil. With luck your companion shall dispatch the sorceress, but regardless, the Evil one must be destroyed." Commanded the Angel, and evaporated.  
  
"There shall be a great battle, oh guardian." The Paladin said. "and your servant shall not fail you!" And with that, he turned and ran towards the far door, inhumanly fast in his new strength. Running through the door of the last sacred temple, he came upon a mighty steel door, and on the other side heard many hundreds of demons, garbling and screeching in the gloomy land of Hell. The Knight slowed and stopped before reaching the door. He was not so foolish as to run straight into his enemy.  
  
Outside the demons, large, muscular brutes two persons high, with putrid swords and thick greasy chains wrapping their limbs and chests, stomped about in two large groups of twelve each, tasked with guarding the door of discord against intruders, they awaited their impatiently.  
  
The mighty door remained closed and immobile in the gloom. The demons milled about, swords ready, and all senses directed at the door. Damathodor clung, silent and watchful, to the wall about twenty yards to the right of the door. He had climbed the wall and picked out his first victim in the near crowd of fiends.  
  
"AAAAAAAHHHH!" screamed the Knight, flying from the dark wall to land with a bone breaking crunch on top of the nearest creature, his blade slicing through the next foe's neck as if it were butter, sending the head spinning away into the air. Stunned, the first group fell in turn under the blade of Athos, the Paladin ducked and rolled beneath a beast's legs, lifting his sword to sever the creature's privates, and rising in back of the bending thing to wedge the cold steel into it's spine.  
  
Whirling to his right the heavy shield of the Knight cracked hard into the bent jaw of another beast, shattering the monster's bones and sending it reeling backwards with a freshly cut gaping hole in his stomach from the Knight's whirling blade. Two more demons of the first group fell within seconds. Barley breathing hard, the Paladin braced himself for the next group, standing poised and furious over his twelve slain corpses. No demon from the second group remained in the gloomy night. They had all of them fled the terrible soldier of light.  
  
Damathodor smiled and ran after them, towards the towering threshold of evil in the distance. Bursting through the doors, the blood of ten more demons warm and dripping from his sword, Damathodor's boots clanked on the steps inside the temple itself. Deserted. The Knight stalked the flights of stairs, looking intently for any foe; he found none.  
  
Arriving at the top of the impossibly long stairs, the Knight looked in awe upon the chamber of the Lord of Terror himself; columns a hundred feet high held the ceiling of high above his head. A pit of fire bridged by a single stone slab led to the center of the room, a giant pentagram etched in red, glowing stone, and a man, dressed all in black clothing, standing at the center, his back to the Knight. Stretched before the man, glowing red in the dark chamber, was a pedestal of darkness.  
  
"Diablo." The Knight whispered, glaring at the man, at least a hundred yards in front of him. The figure turned his head slightly in the gloom, and, turning all the way around to see the Paladin, cocked his head quizzically.  
  
"Yes?" came his echoed answer to the Knight's barely uttered address. 


	17. The Summoner and the Terror Lord

In response to the first new review I have gotten in almost a year, I have decided to keep writing, and here is what we have, because, as one review evidenced, people are still reading . . . Thank you for putting up with me, and I have already finished another chapter after this, so only wait a few days and soon we will have the conclusion!  
  
-J. Diabolico-  
  
Durag Lithinthuar, covering his eyes in the white blast, blinked away the blindness of the sorceress' lightening spell. The woman stood gazing, confused and scared at the unaffected iron golem. Her hands at her sides, she looked for any sign of damage from her attack.  
  
"Iron," Durag laughed, "Does not yield to electricity, my lady." The sorceress' eyes showed plainly a hint of fear as she turned and ran towards the large center tome. Durag sent his minions scampering quickly after her, bony fists drawn back and blazing with dark magic. The iron monster clanked stoically forward, as well, It's plated spikes jingling dangerously in the gloom.  
  
"You are a fool to stand in my way, Necromancer! Your weak compelling powers over the dead will not match my Lord's granted power!" Cried the Sorceress, casting her hands over the room, the skeletal mages did not halt, but advanced. Suddenly, rising before them in the gathering dark of the room, ten festering, green corpses, rotted skin still hanging from their decayed flesh and bones, formed a circle of defense against the attack. Leaping back, the mages immediately began to discharge their elemental magic, knocking the zombies slowly backwards.  
  
"To fight a Necromancer with the dead," sighed Durag from the opposite end of the room. "Is like trying to put out a fire by feeding it wood!" The powerful dark lord spread his hands and the corpses stiffened in their advance and hesitated. A moment later the Sorceress' weak hold over the mindless bodies visibly faltered and died. The creatures, now under the Necromancer's control, turned and advanced with the mages upon the panting Sorceress.  
  
Conjuring a powerful spell, the woman blast forth a torrent of flame, incinerating five of the green corpses where they stood, and singing the rotted dead flesh of the other five. Shielding herself from the barrage of the skeletons' blasts with an orb of protective lightening, the woman, now fighting for her life, sent a group of icy missiles flying towards the iron golem, which had clomped up to her right. Freezing its joints, the Sorceress watched as it fell, facedown and immobile, to the floor. She then sent two blasts of red flame into the nearest skeleton minions, knocking two of the weakly structured warriors to pieces.  
  
Durag had not wasted any time. Striding swiftly to a small tome near the left hand side of the room; he came upon what he was looking for. Ever since the first battle he had fought against her forces, the Necromancer had noticed the abilities of her hordes to mimic his art by raising their slain comrades. The Sorceress' own tendency to rely on a weak form of Necromancy had also not escaped his notice. As he had suspected, her evil lord Diablo had provided her with an ancient summoning orb. Sacred to the Priests of Rathma, these archaic devices were used by the first of the Rathma magi to summon the shades of the dead for their servitude and control. Through consistent use, however, the orbs had been found dangerous for the reason that the user of the orb all too often began summoning apparitions of evil and cunning whose forms he or she could not control with their rudimentary compelling hexes; many unwary priests and orb-users had been imprisoned by their own manifestations. The priests had long ago decided to destroy the remaining orbs. This one must have been spared by the Dark Lord himself centuries ago, and therefore probably held immense power.  
  
Another mage fell, and the Necromancer turned from his work quickly and spat out a quick curse with a flick of his fingers. A red, evil glow encompassed the Sorceress as she readied a coup de grace for the final two staggering skeletons. Her fireball landed with a singing crack into the nearest skeletal mage, knocking it's arm off and sending it's right leg into spasms as it clattered to the floor, once again lifeless. The dark haired woman smiled triumphantly to herself as she watched the last of the skeletons, an ice mage, beginning to retreat under her attack, but her victory was short-lived as she looked down to find her own cloak burning merrily away. She screamed in surprise and pain as she realized that whatever damage she inflicted upon the Necromancer's minion, she received double upon herself. Recoiling, she scampered behind an ancient bookcase and refreshed her protective spell. Where was the Necromancer, anyway?  
  
Durag, peering into the dark and swirling orb, worked out the images of the souls captivated within, the souls the sorceress had call forth with it. The sorceress had been hard at work, conjuring up some truly horrific demons of extremely powerful dimensions; torturing them with her hell-given assistance from Diablo to do her bidding and act as servants. Demons, of course, did not like to be enslaved any more than a human did, so naturally Durag assumed the powerful apparitions within the orb would jump at the chance of avenging themselves upon their Sorceress master, if, that was, he could find a way to break the orb's seal. He summoned all of his strength. His sword bounced harmlessly off the shiny orb, not even leaving a scratch. He looked up to see his last mage, an ice skeleton, stagger backwards under a fireball, the sorceress screamed in pain from behind her bookcase, but the pain spell was weakening.  
  
"Khala! Gimeni A'la Forsani!" Durag ordered to his mage, and, hearing his master call, the mage clanked quickly over to the Necromancer. Creating a protecting wall of gleaming bone around them, Durag turned to the quizzical skeleton. "Rega, La!" he ordered, and, without any hesitation, the mages' icy hands froze the compelling orb solid. It looked up when it was finished, and Durag smiled, saying "Shala, shala, nima tonithua." Or, good, good, now show it to your enemy!, and the creature leapt up to comply.  
  
"Show yourself, Sorcerer! Coward!" cried the Sorceress, the pain spell having worn off, she had come out to finish the mage and found her way blocked by a wall of bone. The frozen iron beast twitched, and she blasted a new ice spell onto it, refreezing its joints. She readied her most powerful inferno spell and prepared to blast away the coward's puny wall. Suddenly, the ice mage leapt out from behind the wall, and, seeing the Sorceress, ran towards her, hands outstretched. Without thinking, she released her inferno . . .  
  
Diablo stood in the fortress keep, head cocked to one side in the gloom, staring at the Knight, who, despite his fear, walked slowly towards him. Damathodor was breathing heavily under his armor, but his super-strength still coursed through his veins, and he felt more confident. Diablo watched him, his shadowed face hidden under the black cloak.  
  
"Who are you?" came a deep voice, stopping the Knight in his tracks, the rich, echoing voice seemed to come from all sides at once. Diablo's form hadn't moved an inch, and Damathodor continued slowly forward. "Why are you here?" the voice asked again, this time with the slightest tinge of annoyance. The figure had still not moved. Damathodor opened his mouth to reply when the command "Answer me!" boomed from right behind him. He whirled and swung his sword through the empty air. Deep, echoing laughter receded down the passage behind him, then from in front of him, and from all sides. The figure was as still and silent as a stone.  
  
"Damathodor," came a voice, again the Knight stopped, bracing in surprise, "Damathodor, Knight of the Guardian Angel." The voice continued. "Why have you come here, warrior of Light? Who has killed so many of my best soldiers?"  
  
"I am here to destroy the evil that plagues my lands. I am here to kill Diablo, for once and all!" Damathodor found his voice, and it carried far into the dark cathedral.  
  
"Kill him?" The voice sounded amused, "But so many have tried before you, and so many have failed!" It spoke through laughter.  
  
"You are mortal, nonetheless!" Returned the Knight, "Come out and fight, vile evil!"  
  
"Do you know how many of your kind I have killed in the past two hundred years?" Laughed the voice, "Of course, that has never deterred your people, so righteous and self-important. I suppose this is some Holy quest by your esteemed 'God'? Or are you on some damn-fool Angel's quest for proving yourself?" It mocked.  
  
"I am here for the souls you torment, for the men and women you have slain and have tortured in the realm of hell for too long!" Damathodor shouted. "Now let us battle, and be done with your pointless talk!" At this the figure of the cloaked man shifted his weight slightly, and two dark, black hands appeared from beneath the brown robes to rise to his face. Tongues of flame licked at the lower folds of the thing's robes, billowing upwards in an expanding inferno to shroud the whole form in a blazing ball of hellish fire, the Knight could barely make out the black hands through the flames, lifting the now incinerated hood and releasing the most hideous evil the world had ever done battle with.  
  
Diablo, the Lord of Terror, stood before the Knight, rising from the fires of the discarded robes, the demon king was taller than his opponent by nearly four times, the yellow and red-cracked horns protruding from the thing's deep red face glowing as bright as the eyes as the beast's four tremendous arms tore up from the flames to clench their clawed fingers and spread their full length across the red-tinted cathedral amphitheater. The tail of Diablo curled menacingly close to the ceiling of the tall structure; it's end spiked and horned as the horns of the creature's head and along it's red, muscular back.  
  
"You," The beast said, it's voice still the same calm, unfaltering level of the man's he embodied as second ago, "Will be no different from the rest."  
  
"We shall soon see." Damathodor gritted his teeth and squared his shoulders as the beast before, above, and all around him bellowed inhumanly and evilly into the cavernous room. 


	18. A Council of Demons

The Necromancer lowered his armored forearm from his face, allowing his pained eyes to readjust to the dimensions of the Sorceress' chamber after the roar of her desperate inferno spell had blown past, decimating his wall of osseous matter and most of the cluttered and battle-ravaged room's remaining artifacts. As his sight adjusted, so did his hearing, the roar of the past wave of flame having temporarily disabled his senses, and the things he saw, coupled with the things he then heard were enough so that had his hair not been entirely bleached already, it certainly would have been.

There hung the Sorceress, suspended in midair by some unseen hand of bewitchment, her arms and legs held rigid and unmoving at her sides. Her face was frozen in terror and her features were drenched in the sweet, aromatic sweat of fear. Durag lifted himself from his knee, feeling the aches and pains in his protesting, battle-worn body, glad that it was over, at least with the sorceress ...

"There he is!" The witch cried in a half-whisper, half tortured sob as Lithinthuar's lithe frame pulled itself from the pile of disintegrated bone. "He's the one who made me torture you! He made me ..." the wretch's pleading was replaced with a scream of pain as her suspended body was racked with sudden seizures. The Necromancer further surveyed the scene, in all its grotesque entirety.

The woman was being held by the force of several hideous shades, their ghastly backs to the dark mage as they flickered and shifted eerily just above the stone floor. Two of them turned to gaze half-interested in the Necromancer, who's manner, despite his fatigue, failed him not.

"Bishu-dsh," He addressed them, "Shku." Using the proper demon tounge for the ancient looking malcreations, addressing them as the equivalent of 'my lords', the nearer demon nodded with an almost patronizing sneer.

"He is not the one," Said one of the farther wraiths, it had not shifted its gaze from the captured witch. "Why do you think that we are so inferior, human? So prone to you mortals' lies?"

"We see all, sorceress," chimed in another, a hideous ghoul of a demon whose shade towered over the room, and his frame and countenance so disfigured and evil looking, not even the learned Necromancer could decide where its head was and which half was the body. "This priest of Rathma we owe our freedom, despite his mortality, he has broken your vile hold, and no longer shall we serve the whims of you or your real master, the 'great and powerful Diablo'." The circle of fifteen to twenty ghosts laughed a vile laugh that shook the room and almost made Lithinthuar pity to fate of his recently defeated foe. Almost.

"You speak easily of freedom, Malakaih," spat a third demon, "Yet I will not feel liberated until this whelp here has been shed of every last particle of her mortality, and her soul is mine to gnaw upon in my infinite slumber in the netherworld!"

"Wise council, Sinivus," came a fourth, deeper, more powerful voice, and Durag noticed the already dim lights flicker and fail, plunging the room in the eerie red gleam of the various demons. Several of the other shades shuddered despite themselves in the wake of this powerful new presence, and the sorceress' eyes widened further, if that was at all possible. The voice continued as a corner of the dark room seemed to grow even darker, and a massive figure rose out of the stone, causing several of the larger demons to back away from the powerful pit lord. "Again you display your superior knowledge and foresight in our admiring company."

"Zhin-Dotrikaih, I, I only meant ..." sputtered the tiny Sinivus, but he was silenced as the lord demon strode forward, simply a massive shadow in the darkness with only two gleaming red eyes to be seen of his featureless form. He strode up to Durag, who, combating all the desire in his body to flee and never return, stood his ground. The smaller imp-demon had addressed this new wraith as 'Zhin-Dotrikaih', which, the mage knew, meant 'King' or 'Lord Fear', obviously not the thing's actual name, but Durag doubted seriously whether any of the demons present knew any other the other's real names; birth-names were powerful sources of power that demons (and anyone dealing with demons, for that matter,) as a rule kept secret, as these binding names could be used to seriously weaken even the strongest of hell-fiends, and a demon or powerful sorcerer could utterly destroy another mortal magician with the knowledge of his birth-name. Lithinthuar's own name was merely an adaption he had taken after his second year of apprenticeship with the Priests of Rathma, his real name was now known only to himself and his long dead parents. Lithinthuar repeated his earlier address, replacing the polite 'Shku' with the much more reverent and praising 'Zhin'. He was acknowledged, even politely, with a nod from the shadow. This one had manners, and spoke with sophistication and wisdom, meaning 'Lord Fear' was probably one of the more dangerous wraiths around.

"Priest of the old way," the creature's voice reverberated off the stone walls and ceiling as he spoke, "For twenty thousand years were we lords of the other realm subject to that binding orb of summons, and for the last five have we suffered the most under this vile witch," He motioned with his eyes to the sorceress, who's paralysis did not keep her from listening fearfully to everything that was said. "She, of course, will die, among other things, but you, esteemed zealot of darkness, to you we shall offer another fate."

"I am here only to serve your will, powerful shade, I swear to it that I never allied myself with her," Durag said respectfully, though the hairs on the back of his neck prickled uncomfortably.

"You misunderstand me, human," the demon king nearly chuckled in bemusement, "To you, our liberator, we will grant one wish that is in our power, as well as this," here the towering blackness bent, his invisible knees sweeping low to the floor as from out of the darkness there floated a small, gleaming object. The shadow's freezing touch passed briefly over the bowing Necromancer's shoulders, and continued down to his feet, finally receding away as Lithinthuar looked up confusedly. He was, to his senses, completely rested, his body had been cured of every burn, cut, scratch, gash and pain he had suffered on the long trek to the fallen tower, and, upon inspection of his newly rejuvenated limbs, the magician soon found that he was also suited entirely in a sinister golden armor. The helmet, more of a braced crown than anything, light and fitted perfectly, had the weight and comfort of silk, but the durability of imbued diamonds and tempered steel, his arms up to his elbows were covered in the same sort of ultra light, flexible gauntlet, the knuckles crowned dangerously with razor-sharp claws to enhance even his hand-to-hand abilities, which were lacking. The plate mail that protected his chest down his arms and past his hips had arcane and devilish designs etched across its smooth surface, and the belt that held the midsection was of a heavy, durable leather, as thick as it was flexible. Finally, the Necromancer saw, his battle-damaged and bloody Kris had been repaired and sheathed in favor of a short but solidly made tasseled wand, the short staff intersecting the terrifying demon-skull of a vanquished pit lord, and no doubt containing invaluable black magic, indeed, the sorcerer felt the power and magic coursing through his veins as it had never before, and his knowledge seemed tripled along with his strength and endurance.

"My lord," he uttered humbly, bowing low to the demon as he struggled to find words of thanks fir for such a kingly gift and overwhelming generosity.

"Now, my dear sorcerer," came another voice from the multitude of wraiths, "Pray tell us what one wish we may grant you in final payment for our freedom, so that we may continue with the ... punishment ... of this unfortunate woman."

The Necromancer had been thinking about that one since the Lord Fear had mentioned it, and he had reached a decision. He smiled mysteriously, causing two of the nearer creatures to cast each other curious gazes.

"I have just the thing to ask, my lords," he said, "and you won't even have to go out of your way to grant my wish ..."


End file.
